August 13, 2008

The story begins with corporate wife, Joanna, faced with yet another move to a new city. In her 25 years as Paul’s wife she’s moved and started over more than a dozen times. Never able to have close friends or meaningful jobs Joanna finally says no more and leaves her home and heads to a small island she fell in love with years before.

I found a lot of the story was disjointed and unbelievable. In the opening pages, her escape is made to seem spur of the moment. One minute she’s out for a walk and the next minute she’s made her escape and on her way to Pawley’s Island. As the story progresses you learn there was more planning involved (she packed a box of mementos, she paid all the current bills, took $5,000 with her) but we find out these facts too late which make them seem like they were added in when the story didn’t seem to flow correctly with what we knew so far.

Then you have Paul. At first he doesn’t really believe Joanna is gone but when he finally faces the fact she’s left he seems unable to track her whereabouts until he gets his boss to trace a late night hang up. It would have been as simple as looking into Joanna’s credit card charges to find out where she’s at.

The remainder of the book has similar incidents that just made the whole story frustrating and hard to believe. The ending was predictable and I didn’t enjoy this read as much as I hoped to.