Deb

I found this book excellent. The story and the narrative entralled me. I absolutely loved it. After the begining, I thought that the story would end on a depressing note, but it did not. In fact, it made me eager to hear the next book by this author. And I absolutely loved the narrator, something I've never before felt. His voice was mesmorizing.

This book is a excellent listen. The story is unique, the cast of characters entertaining. Seldom is rooting for the bad guy(s) so compelling. The book is full of action, yet not gruesome or gratuitous in any way.

The narration is awesome! Eisler easily slips from English to Japanese and has a warm, easy voice to listen to.

The only thing that kept this book from being 5 stars for me is that I would have liked to see more of an intimate side of the main character. He seems to be so cut off from the world and isolated that it gave me a twinge of sadness. However, I feel (hope) that the main character (Rain) is developing and we will see more involvement with him in the future. I hope so!

First, when someone is worried that they have started too late to finish rich (or even comfortable), the last thing they need to hear is that someone in their thirties is considered starting late! Most people who are likely to buy this book are probably in their late 40's and 50's and they don't want to hear how a 30 year old has 4 decades to pursue growth! They want to hear how they, the ones who truly started late, can improve their financial outlook at retirement.

Second, this book gives table after table after table. I wouldn't want to read these tables and I sure as heck don't want to listen to them. "At 3%, after 5 years you have X. After 10 years, you have X. After 15 years, you have X. After 20 years, you have X. After 25 years, you have X. After 30 years, you have X. At 4%, after..." Good grief! That goes on forever! Then it repeats again and again! I own a calculator, I can figure this out!

Third, this book is like listening to a phone book, as well as book of tables. Does the author tell us about low cost brokerages and they help achieve our goals? No. Instead, he gives us the names pretty much every brokerage that exists, along with listing their addresses and phone numbers. That is is ridiculous! In addition to my calculator, I have a phone book! Then he goes on (and on and on) about mutual funds. No, not the value of mutual funds or really how they help you meet your goals, but their names, addresses and, yes, phone numbers.

Most of this book was the tables, addresses and phone numbers! Oh, yeah, and stories of young people who didn't believe that they too could be rich in 40 years!

What did I learn from this book? I learned that I'm screwed, since I'm the likely normal person who would interested in this book...truly an older person wanting to improve my chances at finishing rich, and I don't have 2, 3 or 4 decades to do it. And if there is a way to do it, I didn't learn how from this book.

I have to say that I've thoroughly enjoyed this book. Puller is a crack investigator and is on an unusual case. He is investigating a murder of a military family, lined up on a couch and apparently video-taped. Neighbors are also murdered. This is an investigation, but has a good amount of action.

I think this is my favorite Baldacci book.

by saying that I love the Ludlum genre. And I’m very sorry that this one doesn’t fit the genre. It’s simply off. And when everyone calls each other “My darling”, gotta say, it’s weird.

The Jack Reacher series is extremely enjoyable. Yes, it’s formulaic. I get that and frankly, I don’t care. I find it entertaining. Jack is a man’s man that women will love. He’s a flawed character, but generally in a good way. He has no problem killing you if you’re a bad guy, but will go out of his way to help a person in distress. There’s obligatory sexual liaisons that go nowhere in every book, but it’s not generally more than a nod that we are human and sexual beings. And it doesn’t get in the way in the story.

The endings are mostly good endings, but not the happy ever after endings that one might want. And, though, I like happy endings, but I still find this series intriguing and very enjoyable. It makes me WANT to listen to every single one of the series and I have listened to most of them, so far. In fact, after listening to my first Jack Reacher book, which was in the middle of the series, I decided to go back to the beginning and listen to them in order. Not that it is necessary, at all.

And the narrator is fantastic. Absolutely great voice!

Someone with absolutely no knowledge of anything financial and under the age of 25.

No.

I expected a financial book, not a juvenile *gasp, OMG* book of simplistic scenarios, such as ???Save $17 a day and in 40 years you will be rich.??? Not kidding here, that???s half the book! Nor do I expect a phone book with a listing of multiple financial companies and mutual funds and their freaking PHONE NUMBERS! Really?

I???m thinking...still thinking...um, not much.

The book may be a good book. A great book, even. It's very hard to tell. The narrator's voice sounded as if he had phlegm in his throat throughout the entire book. That, added to his monotonous tone, made me dislike listening to it. And Jeffrey Deaver is normally one of my favorite authors. I literally had to turn off this book and start listening to a podcast on budgeting and saving money. And the podcast had 1,000 times the vocal inflection and vibrancy of this reader! Amazing!

This book was very odd. The character, as noted by others, was virtually identical to Stephanie Plum. Except she had a southern accent and can't speak English, which was unfortunate since she is supposed to be from New England. Every time the narrator dropped the 'g' on every 'ing' word she said, I expected her next word to be 'fixin', i.e. fixing without the g. Stephanie loves food and obsesses about it. Well, so does Lizzy. I expected Lizzy to exclaim "Pie!" at any moment. Nope. But she does exclaim about muffins and pork chops! And having a secondary character whose only purpose seems to be to yell "Twatgobble!" and similar nonsense on and on is not funny, nor entertaining.

Honestly, it was a low rate, not very fun, and not funny at all, Plum book. But a very, very boring version of one. Where was the fun? I realize that the Plum series is not higher reading, but they are fun and lively and entertaining. This was none of those things. The book is only about 6 hours long, but seems tedious by the second hour. And it doesn't get any better as the book goes on.

I'll be honest and state that I did not listen to part two of the book. By the time I was two-thirds of the way through part one I was bored silly. I kept persevering because this book had such good reviews. I kept telling myself that it would get better. Maybe it does. But, honestly, I was so bored that I couldn't stand it. And parts of it were a bit disgusting. I finally gave up. I just don't get the good reviews.

This was a book that wasn't painful to listen to, but it didn't make you really care if you finished listening to it or not. Quite frankly, I completed listening to it only because I paid for it, not because I enjoyed it. Which was too bad, because I love Jeffrey Deaver generally.

This book was scattered on what it tried to accomplish. I couldn't care about the characters because as soon as the book would start to make me care, the character would suddenly drop out of the picture. For example, the 'romantic' interest apparently had a problem with his relationship with Catherine Dance. I don't know what it was, because it was never stated and he just dropped out of sight. He returned in the last few paragraphs as an after thought, apparently just for a beer.

The main villan was into gratuitous violence, but I can't even say that I found him scary. He was boring.

And suddenly having a character jump from being a good guy to becoming a bad guy without any warning, without any clues to make you think or wonder, just a few mediocre pages on 'oh, yeah, the good guy was an evil doer', made me feel that even the writer didn't have any real interest in this book.