A Must Read ( )

Dreadful - could not make it past page 10 and did not even flick to the end to check what happened. ( )

Dreadful - could not make it past page 10 and did not even flick to the end to check what happened. ( )

A Nawth Carolina family, the Boatwrights, who win a huge jackpot in the lottery are descended upon by an opportunistic psychopath, Shaw, and his increasingly reluctant sidekick who terrorize the Boatwrights into splitting the winnings with them; more than that, the Boatwrights must publicly declare how much they love Shaw and regard him as almost one of the family. The public of course swallows tis wholesale, and a cult builds up around Shaw; worse still, the Boatwrights, with the exception of teen daughter Tara, in Stockholm-Syndrome fashion begin to swallow the bullshit too.

I really like the movies based on this author's two earlier novels, especially The Caveman's Valentine, so, even though I've not read those two, I leapt upon this. I found it, alas, pretty lightweight.
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Two misfits on a road trip come across a family if lottery winners in a quiet city in the southern US. This book tells the story of what happens when people get caught up in lies. It's not the kind of book I would usually read and I'm not actually sure whether I enjoyed it or not, but it raises some interesting questions about truth and the power of belief and how easy it is for people to believe someone if they say and do the right things. ( )