Customer Reviews

Sam's Letters To Jennifer

5 star:		(83)
4 star:		(38)
3 star:		(32)
2 star:		(24)
1 star:		(33)

 

 

It still amazes me that the James Patterson can write such graphic stories as the Alex Cross series and also romance stories. I have read all of his books and couldn't put them down. "Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas" was the first book to make me cry in years. Because of this I was excited to read this book. "Sam's Letters to Jennifer" is a great book, but it was predictable. If you like romantic quick reads than this is the book for you. All of Pattersons books are fast paced and hard to put down. A word of caution however to those who haven't read any of his other stuff and want to now.

His other books like the Alex Cross series are very graphic and gory detailed. I enjoyed them, but they are totally different than his romance novels.

A co-worker loaned me this book. I thoroughly enjoyed it for what it is . . . a romantic tear jerker, with all that the genre entails. Laughter. Tears. Tragic hero and wounded heroine. Wise role model with secrets of her own. Love lost. Love found. Love almost lost again, due to tragic circumstances.

This book is, at its core, the love story between a girl and her wonderfully brave grandmother.

Well worth a night's read.

Enjoy.

I found this "novel" to be one of the poorest I have read to date. The characters are not developed, the story line was weak and it lacked imagination. It seemed as if Mr. Patterson stopped by a bar one night and jotted it down on a napkin! It should have been labeled as no more than a short story.

I believe the last time I read a book with such a large font, two inch margin on all four sides and less than 200 words per page ---- I was in the third grade!! New chapters were used as a way of extending the story/number of pages --- they were not used as a means to express a new idea or thought.

Take my advice -- do not waste your time or money.

I don't know why I bother with James Patterson-all the melodrama and cliches. This book typifies his style. I correctly quessed the ending after reading just 20 pages of this book. It's sappy and silly. I promise not to do this to myself again...

If I could return a book just because it is lame, I would have returned this one the minute I finished it. It was not worth the money I spent or the time I invested reading it. I loved "Suzanne's Diary" and hoped this book would bring me as much as that one did...but alas it didn't. It was sappy and stupid and there were just too many obvious shortfalls. For instance, Jennifer supposedly loved her grandmother (Sam) more than anything, but yet once Sam is hospitalized, Jen visits her only twice a day, and spends the rest of her time swimming, flirting and making love to the neighbor so it's not believeable that Sam is anything other than an after thought... As well, the ending was predictable from a mile away (and probably even further for fans of "Suzanne's Diary.") Of course, Sam's coma doesn't last, of course, no great harm comes to Jen's new beau, of course, a baby ties it all up in a happy bow...Gag! I wish James Patterson would just send me my money back along with a promise not to write any more bad books trying to recapture the magic of "Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas!"

when I first picked this book up, I noticed that it was very similar in title to Suzanne's letters to Nicholas, but I thought ok- well, if this book was candy and I was a diabetic, I would be DEAD.

Sam is Jennifer's grandmother who is in a coma. Jennifer comes to Lake Geneva and stays in the Grandmother's house, while she is visiting the hospital.

Jennifer has had some terrible things happen in her life. Her love of her life died in Hawaii and she is unable to let go of the pain and the guilt that she feels because she wasn't there for him when he passed.

As Jennifer is staying in her Grandmother's house, she reads letters that her Grandmother has written to her over the course of some years explaining HER life and how she was in a unhappy marriage with Jennifer's grandfather and how she finally found love after so many years being miserable. Jennifer then meets her grandmother's neighbor Brendan. They were childhood friends and haven't seen each other for a very long time. They spend wonderful days and night reliving all the things the did when they were growing up. Unbeknowst to Jennifer, Brendan who is a Doctor, has a unoperable brain tumor ( this is where it gets sappy) but he is skeptical about a new treatment for this condition. He one day disappears and Jennifer finally finds him in New York, receiving a new proceedure for his brain tumor. During the time that they are in New York, Samantha wakes up and is looking for Jennifer.

Jennifer flies home or back to the Grandmother and talks to her and wants to know more about her life.

the end of this book definately gets WEAK and flat. The end is so sickening that I was very disappointed.

This book was a complete waste of paper, ink and my time. Here's the premise. Sam (short for Samantha) decides to write letters to her granddaughter Jennifer explaining her life and giving the young girl words of wisdom. The characters never seemed real and I had no connection with or compassion for any of them. Sam appeared to be a selfish woman who needed to rationalize her extra marital affair through her letters. Jennifer was a weak woman who had only been widowed a short while but was apparently able to move on with her life in an amazingly short time. Her purpose in going to and remaining at her Grandmother's house supposedly was to be available to go the hospital and be by her Grandmothers side to help encourage her recovery. This apparently only required about 8 minutes of her time per day. The rest was spent reading her grandmother's letters, and wasn't it perfect timing Grandma was able to finish these letters approximately 11 seconds before falling into her coma, and in break neck speed developing an amazingly deep love affair with a man she'd known in her youth but hadn't seen since childhood. For someone who so deeply loved her first husband this new relationship just didn't ring true. Of course, none of the story was particularly plausible or even interesting for that matter.

Save your time and money and run, don't walk past this book and on to something far more worthwhile and enjoyable.

This was a case of being seduced by the title and cover only to be horribly disappointed by the content. Even now I can't believe how bad this book was. Reading the prologue, I found myself wondering if he'd just put no effort into writing that particular part at all- it was that bad. I had high hopes for this book-a bestselling author, fabulous title and it's a love story. But the writing, not to mention the plot, is very very bad-rough, childlike, and has the stamp of an amateur all over it. The language is so simplistic and collooquial that it's full of such gems of literary phrase as "Now that I please myself, my priorities are better" or "I was so happy, and I remember every moment of that night in Lake Geneva" and "Because less than three weeks later, something really terrible happened". Slang is used instead of expression-words such as "totally" and "really nice" abound, and overall it's just a horrible book. The dialogue between the lovers is trite and unbelievable, and so is the pacing and plot events of the book. I skimmed through the whole book to make sure that the prologue wasn't a fluke-that the whole book continued in the same vein. It did-and just half-skimming/half-reading I was bored. The main character apparently has the mind of teenager, or at least that means of expression. Completely lacking in elegance, polish, talent, or believability, this is similar in style and content to Nicholas Spark's books, but unlike his books displays no maturity whatsoever-Nicholas Spark at least has some writing ability. It's a shame, because about the only thing the book has going for it is that the overall plot and characters do have a lot of potential-it's just completely unrealized.

I am a fan of Mr Patterson's books, but this one was very disapointing. It was like he sat down and wrote up a list of "what will make women cry" and then put every single thing in the book. It is overdone to the point of you can not connect to the characters because the tragedy's that happen to them are too much and in a manner that is not realistic to everyday life. Mr Patterson needed to think instead of what will make a woman cry but what will make a good story not a formulated story. This book tried to force the reader to be emotional and instead makes you feel annoyed at the characters and the story.

This author needs to stick to his normal genre. This was a good idea for a story line, but I felt like a 14 year old wrote it! I have read most of his other books and have enjoyed them, but I had to force myself to finish this one.