Life in Pieces in Blog Tour in Pieces Q and A

Mar 28, 2012 Lucy rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-2012

Disclaimer: I was given this book free of charge in exchange for an honest review

Synopsis (from Amazon)
An unemployed stay at home dad who opens the paper one morning to find he is running for congress, a young man struggling to hold onto a life that is slipping away while meeting the love of his life, and a crazy old man who couldn't care less about any of this all cross paths in Christopher Profeta's debut novel "Life in Pieces." These lives come gracefully together to show that we are never to Disclaimer: I was given this book free of charge in exchange for an honest review

Synopsis (from Amazon)
An unemployed stay at home dad who opens the paper one morning to find he is running for congress, a young man struggling to hold onto a life that is slipping away while meeting the love of his life, and a crazy old man who couldn't care less about any of this all cross paths in Christopher Profeta's debut novel "Life in Pieces." These lives come gracefully together to show that we are never to old to come of age.
Review
I don't really know where to start with this review. I have things that I want to say but I'm not sure where to start. Part of my problem is that I don't really like the synopsis, but I am awful at writing my own overviews or synopsis' (synopsi?) so I'm kind of plumping with it. Plus if I did write a synopsis it would kind of reveal a secret which I don't really understand why is a secret. In fact I'm not even sure if it is a secret or a presumption I have made, based on the ending that might be more exact...but I think I'm right. (Talk about cryptic, right?)
I really enjoyed the style of writing. It felt more like you were having a conversation with the characters of the book rather than reading about them. I could almost imagine what might be going through their heads at certain moments. I must admit the old man's story held my attention the least but I still found it rather moving, I guess it's just that it had the least storyline. Of course that's not always a bad thing, but alongside the other two stories I felt a little like I was waiting for something to happen. The story of the student interested me early on but the story of the politician became my favourite. I did like how the student story balanced quite well between the other two however, it made me think more than the politician story (although there were elements of that story which did make me think, they were kind of peripheral), but wasn't moving in the same way that the old man's story was.
I was trying to guess all the way through how the three stories related to each other, if at all, but I think I got it in the end.
The only negative thing I can really say is that I noticed a few mistakes, sometimes just typos but at other times in word choice (e.g. know instead of now) which wouldn't have been picked up by a spell check. These were few and far between but did seem to increase in volume towards the end of the novel, almost as if a proofread had gotten lazy towards the end. I am a bit more forgiving of this seeing as Life in Pieces is self-published*, but I'm still not exactly happy about it.

4/5

*Seeing as self-published novels are financed by the author it's unlikely they can afford all the professionals of a mass market publisher. That means I can forgive a few mistakes, possibly even expect them.

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