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Book Reviewed by:Not wishing to beat about the bush on this, let me tell you up
front that I just loved this book! When selecting titles to recommend I
look for books that will both entertain and inform (because life is too short to
spend it reading lightweight fluff, but equally who wants to spend their
hard-earned leisure time reading dull, weighty tomes?), in particular I look for
books that give me the opportunity to see the world through someone else's eyes
- for example, books that take me to a place that I don't know or put me inside the
brain of somebody quite different to myself. McGovern has done the latter
quite brilliantly - I really felt that I was seeing the world through the eyes
of her lead protagonists.
Eye Contact has a wide cast of characters (one reviewer felt a few too many)
but they are all well-drawn and, on the whole, ring true. The most richly
imagined are Cara, Adam's mother, and Morgan, a troubled 13-year-old boy who's
determined to solve the crime as a way to atone for his own perceived guilt.
McGovern wraps all these richly drawn characters and a host of astute insights
around a gripping mystery which twists and turns down a good few dead ends
before arriving at its unexpected conclusion - making the whole package
irresistible.
Selected Reviews
"Meticulously researched and emotionally absorbing, this provocative page-turner
also addresses an important issue—how to educate and care for children with
special needs." - PW.
"Tightly woven and gripping, this literary mystery takes several unexpected
twists and turns as it builds to the resolution." - Booklist.
"Their narrow suburban world is populated by an excessive number of damaged
souls laboring to rebuild their lives; it all reads too much as case study.
Nevertheless, the narrative moves like a freight train, and its conclusion will
leave no reader unmoved." - Kirkus.
This review
first ran in the August 2, 2006
issue of BookBrowse Recommends.
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