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I listened to two stand-alone books by Lisa Scottoline, an author who is new to me: Look Again and Save Me. I loved the premise of Look Again; a mother sees a flyer for a kidnapped child and realizes he's a dead ringer for her adopted son. But it didn't deliver, with far too many contrivances to twist the story into the shape the author wanted it to be. The romantic subplot was just annoying. Narrator Mary Stuart Masterson was okay.
Save Me also had an intriguing start, with a school explosion forcing a mother to decide whether to help the children she's been bawling out for bullying her kid, or her kid who's hiding in the bathroom. But it just went haywire. The last chapters, after the big denouement, just droned on and on--I kept thinking the book was over, and then, wait, there's more! Cynthia Nixon narrated this one, and either the author didn't put in any commas, or Nixon doesn't know what they mean, as she didn't seem to pause in places that one would logically pause.
In both of these, Scottoline had an annoying habit of giving too many details for simple actions that don't require them. The character will be making a phone call, for example: first she has to pick up her phone, go to the phone function, scroll through the phone numbers, press the number, etc. And when she's done, she always, always seems to have to press end, because, I guess, the reader is too dense to figure out that that's how you end a phone call.
Still, both books were sort of fun to read--like watching a Lifetime movie on a weekend afternoon.
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