worst book I have read in a long time
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having enjoyed cornwells early books, I recently picked this up looking forward to a good read. I was so utterly disapointed after reading this, there is no depth to it, I wondered what i had read after finishing it and was so disgusted with it that i left it on the train for some poor unfortunate reader to pick up! I will never buy one of her books again, she has totally lost her power to write a good enthralling novel/page turner...
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total boring rubbish
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i cannot believe patricia cornwell wrote this pile of rubbish, i was gutted and felt ripped off for paying £9.99 for this book, her other books are so gripping i thought this would be too, dont waste your money or time on this book, sorry but its that awful
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This book is a waste of money!
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I can't believe how bad this book is. I bought it because I enjoyed all of Patricia Cornwell's other crime fiction. This book was very different - it was weakly written, the story was boring and the end explanation just happened without any build up. Does any reader really care about the story here? I cannot fathom why a writer of Cornwell's reputation would put her name to such poor quality work. If only I had read the Amazon reviews, I'd never have wasted time reading this book.
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Disappointing and Over-Rated
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The book begins with a beguiling opening sentence, but I soon lost interest in the story. The unsympathetic characters soon gave way to stereotype. Nearly everyone is a hard-bitten, career-focused meglamaniac. None more so than the female police protagonist, who gets raped then pulls herself together remarkably quickly and gives a cohorent press conference within a few hours vowing to champion good against evil with her new crime fighting unit. How many rape victims manage to do this in real life? Not many, I bet. Ms Cornwell needs to do a reality-check and speak to some traumatised rape victims then she would have a clearer idea what she is writing about. Needless to say, the author lost me at this point, and the only character I found at all engaging was the grandmother. I found it impossible to relate to the other characters and the short length of this book made for a skimpy read. People read fiction because they want to relate to characters who have strengths and frailties. Ms Cornwell's characters are completely devoid of the latter.
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Well, I liked it...sort of...
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Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta series has always been one of my favourite series of books and so I thought I'd give this stand-alone novel a try (especially at it's 1p price-tag, thanks to Amazon!). Although not at the highest quality of Cornwell's usual standards, 'At Risk' is a fairly good read with a number of good plot twists and plenty of action that kept me interested. At just 240 pages, (where the writing is also quite large) it is easy to to fly through and finish this book in no time at all.
A few things let this book down with generally unlikeable characters, a bit of a far-fetched storyline and not enough characterisations to make you really care what was going to happen. Maybe if Cornwell brings back Win and Skyes she may reveal a bit more about their backgrounds, but in 'At Risk' I really didn't care about them at all.
After reading nothing but negative reviews, I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't actually that bad after all. Like I said, not Cornwell's best, but if it was written by a lesser-known author this probably wouldn't have been given the public slating that it has been given. Worth a read if you've read all the Kay Scarpetta and Andy Brazil books and want something else from Cornwell.
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