Book Review: Layover by David Bell

This one started out very promising, but about half way through things took a turn for the crazy and they never came back for me…

There are so many places in which the reader is asked to suspend disbelief here that it makes the story difficult to swallow. The decisions made by Joshua are a MAJOR part of the problem in that regard. Why oh why would a sane individual, even one facing a dark night of the soul because his life is not what he thought it would be (seriously – am I the only one who finds it tough to feel sympathy that he’s stuck in a great job that flies him all over the country working for his dad who basically sticks up for him at every opportunity no matter what he does?!), follow a woman he met for twenty minutes all the way to hell and back?

Why wouldn’t the cops act like cops instead of repeatedly letting him go? Why would his ex keep hanging on, his dad keep covering for him, the detective let everything slide? Answer: they wouldn’t, at least not all of them, and since that is the conclusion I came to early on, I couldn’t keep myself swallowing what the author was serving long enough to fall into the story…

The action ramps up in the end, but with a series of rather unbelievable coincidences and revelations that did nothing to pull my back in, believability-wise. There were some cool bits, but overall this one just didn’t work for me…

My review copy was provided by Penguin First to Read.