Customer Reviews

Live to Tell

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

At one time life seemed normal but Lauren Walsh's divorce changed everything. She can no longer trust her instincts or the very things she once took for granted. When her youngest daughter Sadie loses her stuffed animal, Lauren tries to reassure her, but the loss of her father has made Sadie more than insistent. When Lauren calls her ex-husband Nick to search the lost and found at Grand Central Station, she demands he pay attention to their children's needs. Lauren's actions set in motion a train of events that will change her life and that of everyone around her. When her husband suddenly disappears, Lauren tries to reassure herself and her children, while not embarrassing herself before former friends and acquaintances. As Lauren tries to find answers, forces she knows nothing about gather, endangering her family in ways she never could have imagined. Outside, a dangerous man will do anything to preserve the secret he has guarded for years. Will Lauren discover the truth in enough time? In trying to protect one's family, how far is one willing to go?

Wendy Corsi Staub's LIVE TO TELL is an awesome work of suspense! Well-plotted, well-imagined, and rich in emotional and character details, LIVE TO TELL takes an all too common scenario, divorce, and twists ideas of family trust and protection into a terrifying scenario. LIVE TO TELL grabs from the very first pages as the reader enters Lauren's world. The author captures perfectly Lauren's distrust and self-questioning following her divorce. The awkwardness she experiences before others now, trying to appear strong while she becomes the subject of the gossip mill, at once makes a reader connect with her while also creating heightened tension as the reader understands more the stakes. As Lauren's story unfolds, Wendy Corsi Staub alternates point of view, bringing the reader into the thoughts of those whose need for secrecy threaten Lauren and her children. Most chilling of all are those sections when the author allows the reader a peek into the emotions and thoughts of the youngest child Sadie. One empathizes with her while, at the same time, wanting to protect her. Unlike Lauren, the reader knows the danger approaching but not the reason or all the interconnections until the very last page. The ending is perfect! Wendy Corsi Staub brings everything together at the end, yet also leaves the reader with a bone-chilling line, a line that makes this reader most anxious to read the next book, SCARED TO DEATH.

LIVE TO TELL satisfies a reader's craving for rich intricate suspense. LIVE TO TELL is more than a quick action-packed race to the finish. Each moment brings the reader more and more into Lauren's world, and the villain's, creating an intensifying, unnerving, thrilling reading experience. The novel becomes richer and richer as it progresses with the gradual unveiling of the secret as the clock counts down. LIVE TO TELL is several cuts above most of the suspense published today. Simply outstanding!

Courtesy of Book Illuminations

One would think that Wendy Corsi Staub is seven people inhabiting the body of one, writing thrillers and young adult books under her own name while penning women's fiction titles under a pseudonym. What is more impressive than the quantity of her work, however, is its sustained quality. Reading her is akin to watching someone walk a tightrope over Niagara Falls: you wonder how long that person is going to be able to keep doing it without slipping. The answer --- at least in Staub's case --- is not yet, if ever, given that her latest work is one of her best to date.

The MacGuffin that propels LIVE TO TELL is a stuffed pink rabbit that belongs to Sadie Walsh, a four-year-old girl whose parents, Nick and Lauren, have just separated. The rabbit, named Fred, has gone missing after an excursion into New York, possibly in Grand Central Station. Nick, the absent father, is shamed into retrieving Fred from the Grand Central Lost and Found. Though he dutifully makes the effort, he collects the wrong pink stuffed animal. Sounds like a Helen Fuller Orton story, right? Well, it's not. Someone wants the stuffed animal that Sadie now has and will do anything to get it. Secreted within it, you see, is a memory stick that has some extremely interesting background data on a political candidate.

In lesser hands this could have been a comedic novel, but LIVE TO TELL is no comedy, as there is some domestic drama that darkens the picture. Lauren has been summarily dumped by her husband. And --- this is pure genius --- Nick has left her for an older woman. Not much older, but the conventional wisdom is that men of a certain age automatically stray with a (much) younger woman, though the book presents a vastly different and more highly believable scenario. The devastation visited upon Nick and Lauren's two other, older children by Nick's absence is quietly but effectively portrayed as well, even as they go about their lives, unaware that the entire family is being observed with bad intent and in plain sight. And where is the stuffed animal with the goods? Only Sadie knows for sure, and she isn't telling.

LIVE TO TELL, though it stands very well entirely on its own, is the first book of a trilogy that, at least from initial appearances, plays out the thick thread of unintended consequence that radiates bad actions. A preview of the second installment, SCARED TO DEATH (to be published later this year), is included at the end of the novel. It appears that this upcoming book may be even better than the current one. My best advice: read LIVE TO TELL now and wait for the next two volumes. You won't be sorry.

I have read every one of Wendy's books and she out did herself this time and what is so exciting is that I see a sequel in the making. Once again, there were so many mysteries going on at once and so many twists and turns, I thought I might have to take a Dramamine...lol...If you love mystery, suspense and a "cant put it down" book, this is for you. If you are new to Wendy Corsi Staub, pick up her back list...I have never read a bad "Wendy book", Happy reading !!!!

...because you are going to take a very bumpy ride through the sleepy fictional Westchester, New York town of Glenhaven!

This bedroom community, just a train ride from New York City is a tentacle of secrets that stretch from Manhattan. Newly divorced mother of Lucy, 14, Ryan, 12 and Sadie, 4, Lauren Walsh is unwittingly at the hub of a series of mysteries.

The first mystery comes to light when Sadie loses the pink stuffed rabbit she has had since birth. Lauren calls her estranged husband to go to Grand Central Station to see if anyone turned it in. Instead of a pink rabbit, he comes back with a pink dog, much to Sadie's displeasure.

The dog is more than just a stuffed toy. It has a role in a series of secrets and mysteries that can undo an entire nation.

Wendy Corsi Staub is a master at creating a web of suspense. Each one of her books contains an interlocking series of mysteries and readers are left trying to guess the solution to the mysteries. What do a couple whose son disappeared 14 years earlier; a ruthless congressman with his eyes on the gubanatorial race and a city kid have in common, if anything? And what does the mysterious figure at the opening of the story have to do with the mysterious pink dog and why is it such a source of vital importance? Are any of the people in Glenhaven involved? And what does a wealthy Manhattan couple with a 1-year-old son have in common with this eclectic cast of characters?

With cliffhanging brilliance, Wendy Corsi Staub takes her readers on a deliciously bumpy ride as red herrings are thrown onto the Mystery Trail. This book opens with a crescendo and ends on a crescendo as well.

I am eagerly awaiting the sequel!

I usually love WCS books, but I found this one to be very slow and plodding -- perhaps because the "secret" she was trying to keep was pretty obvious, or perhaps because so much of the book seemed to be everyone moping about Nick's betrayal of Lauren.

Hope the sequel is better.

Lauren Walsh is a young Westchester, NY suburbanite still devastated by the breakup of her marriage, made even more so by the fact that her husband left her for another woman, and the not-unexpected effects that has had on her three children.

Elsa Cavalon is trying without much success to recover from the disappearance of her son, Jeremy, at the age of seven. He had simply vanished, and despite the passage of 14 years she has never really given up hope that she can some day achieve 'closure,' whatever that may mean, and discover whether or not he is still alive.

The third story line of this book deals with a ruthless "bad guy" who seems beyond the reach of any kind of justice, and whose efforts to stay that way have far-reaching and unpredictable ramifications. The point is made, and made again, that "bad things happen everywhere."

The novel shifts from Lauren to Elsa seemingly every few pages, increasing the suspense as, I am sure, is intended, but proving disconcerting to this reader, who would have preferred to linger a bit longer along the separate plotlines. The back-story of each of the three main characters is doled out very slowly as the tale unfolds, over and beyond the first two to three hundred pages and beyond. As it does, the reader - and the characters - are unsure who is what he, or she, appears to be and who can be trusted. I for one was totally unprepared for the point at which they converge. All does not even start to become clear until well over 300 pages have been turned, as the tale shifts into overdrive. Suspenseful and eminently readable, the book is recommended. [The reader is given a peak at the next novel by this author, "Scared to Death," in which at least some of these characters reappear.]

Left to pick up the pieces of her splintered family, Lauren Walsh finds herself struggling to provide her children with a small sense of normalcy after her husband abandons the family for another woman. Elsa Cavalon is a fraction of her previous self, clawing her way through the days as she deals with personal issues of parental incompetency. Presidential hopeful, Garvey Quinn, will do anything to protect his family--but more importantly his reputation--on his trek to higher political power.

At first glance, fans may find it difficult to navigate the multiple storylines as introductions to this considerable cast of characters occurs within the first few chapters. However, it pays to be patient. As any fan will tell you, Staub's characters are rich with personality and building plotlines with texture and depth is her specialty. What would you do to save your children? The answer to that question is the underlying foundation in "Live to Tell". While the initial thread between each may be invisible at the start, when the pieces begin to fall into place, the suspense is almost palpable and you won't be able to set "Live to Tell" down.

I ordered this on line so did not of course browse through it and it was very familiar and I realized I had purchased it in a store and already read it. I wanted to send it back but figured the postage would not make it worthwhile so just kept it and passed it on.....................................it was enjoyable now that I REMEMBER I read it....title actually mean little in remembering if one has read a book as they are all so similar????

At 99 cents this book is a steal. I would have happily paid $10 for it. I loved all the characters and the story lines. Never failed to keep me guessing. The rest of the series is perfect as well!

This is ths first book in the trilogy by Wendy Corsi Straub....buy the book. You will not be sorry. I love Lauren Walsh, she is raising three kids are on her own. Her husand left her from a another woman. Lauren falls for Sam...he trying is to impress her, and he get's hurt. She is a little scared to saying yes to his dinner date under everything the circumstances that happened but says yes.

The story between Elsa and Brett was really great. Brett never gave up on her...stuck by her side with all the problems they went through with adopting. I really respect somone to give up on there wives and just supports them like Brett did for Elsa.

You just have to read Sacred to Death after.