Traveling With T purchased this book for her own reading time.

Sleeping Beauty

Summary: Author Miles Van Meter is on a book tour to promote his sensational bestseller Sleeping Beauty, a true-crime account of a deeply personal subject: the attack by a serial killer that left his twin sister, Casey, in a coma. Tonight the audience waits to hear Miles discuss recent developments in his sister’s case — unaware that pieces of this complex puzzle of violence, unknown even to the author, are about to be revealed.

Six years earlier, life was much simpler for everyone involved, especially seventeen-year-old Ashley Spencer, a popular high school soccer star. Then one night an intruder entered Ashley’s home and murdered her father and her best friend. Traumatized and suffering from a crippling sense of survivor guilt, Ashley is ready to give up on both soccer and life until help comes from an unexpected source — a scholarship to the Oregon Academy, an elite private school, is extended to her by school dean Casey Van Meter. The school quickly becomes a haven for both Ashley and her mother, Terri. As Ashley regains her sense of self through the school’s soccer program, Terri joins a writing group for adults led by Joshua Maxfield, a former literary wunderkind who has disappeared from the bestseller lists since his second book was panned by both critics and fans.

Then tragedy strikes again and Ashley has to run for her life, unaware that the key to her survival is in the one book she’s afraid to read — Sleeping Beauty.

With its blend of dizzying plot twists and thrilling suspense, Sleeping Beauty shows Phillip Margolin at the very top of his form.

Traveling With T’s Thoughts:

I’ve been singing the praises of Phillip Margolin and his Robin Lockwood series lately and I decided to dive into his backlist for some other reading. I saw the mixed reviews of Sleeping Beauty- but didn’t pay attention.

Sleeping Beauty was NOT bad, it just was not up to the snuff of the Robin Lockwood series. The book felt a bit disjointed at times and even…. rushed a bit.

 

What I liked:

Ashley. There was a character who had been to hell and back and lived to tell the tale.

How the story was divided into current and past settings.

 

What I didn’t love:

The cover was not my fave. Again, I like the Robin Lockwood covers much better.

Most of the characters were def in the unlikeable camp.

 

Bottom line: For me, this book was just not as good as I know his writing can be. I don’t regret reading or buying it- but I don’t know if I’ll be looking for much of his standalone backlist- I have heard his Amanda Jaffe series is great.

 

*Traveling With T purchased this book for her own reading time. All thoughts and opinions are mine alone.*

 

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Happy Reading and Bookishly Yours,

T @ Traveling With T