Customer Reviews

A World I Never Made

5 star:		(39)
4 star:		(27)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

Pat Nolan flies to Paris to identify the body of his estranged daughter, Megan. She seemed fine when he spoke to her on Christmas Day, and her suicide several days later does not make sense.

When Pat arrives in Paris, he discovers it is not his daughter's body. Believing she is in danger and the suicide note holds important clues to her whereabouts, he identifies the body as Megan and has it cremated the same day as requested in the note. He then begins a search for his missing daughter that takes him farther, physically and emotionally, than he ever thought possible.

With very few clues, and the help of beautiful French detective Catherine Laurence, Pat travels across France to such places as Marrakech, Casablanca, Tangiers, Germany, and the Czech Republic. Along the way, he becomes a target of the French police and a band of international terrorists.

While the reader follows Pat and Catherine on their increasingly dangerous journey, the author tells Megan's story beginning a year before her alleged suicide. She spent the previous ten years traveling throughout Europe as a writer while meeting men willing to pay for her companionship. Along the way, she meets Abdel Lahani, a Saudi businessman. Lahani, it turns out, is not the typical mark and Megan becomes involved in a game far more dangerous and widespread than she could ever imagine.

A World I Never Made includes an interesting and diverse cast of characters. Besides those already mentioned, others include French Deputy Chief Inspector Genevieve LeGrand; Marie Sancerre, a 14 year-old street flower vendor who keeps popping up in strange places; Daniel Pelletier, Catherine's beloved uncle and retired French gendarme (police officer); Annabella Jeritza, a Gypsy fortuneteller who befriended Megan; Annabella's grandson Doro; Abdullah al-Azim, a Syrian pharmacist who helps Megan when she needs him most; and Max French, an American FBI agent.

LePore has written a fascinating suspense story of power and treachery, broken relationships and redemption. Interweaving the two story lines throughout the book can sometimes cause the reader to lose track of the relationship between characters if one is not paying close attention. However, telling Pat and Megan's stories at the same time adds impact as they head towards a stunning and unexpected conclusion.

An attorney for over twenty years, LePore's first novel is an impressive start to a great second career. I highly recommend the compelling suspense story of vivid characters and haunting storyline that will stay with the reader long after the final page.

The Good: In abstract, outline form, this book has a great storyline and potential subplots. A brave, beautiful, cynical young American on the run abroad from shadowy forces fakes her own suicide. Her estranged father must find her before the bad guys do. Along the way, a fascinating subplot of him meeting and falling in love with another wounded soul adds to the novel. These three characters are assisted by the Roma of Europe as they flee from attack by the bad guys, struggle to redeem themselves and each other. There's great potential here.

The Bad: Whatever computer program converts from whatever format to the Kindle needs serious help. Does anyone "beta test" these free books before throwing them up on the site? I understand the principle of "you get what you pay for," but this issue seems to be a systemic problem with this and other free Kindle books. If typos drive you crazy, this isn't the book for you.

The Ugly: Overall execution of the book's outline was just flat and underdeveloped. If half of the available subplots had been decently explored, this book would have been significantly longer and more interesting. As written, the characters are flat and relationships aren't well explored as they develop and change. Some of the police characters could have been very interesting, particularly the American FBI agent. The main villain might as well be a cardboard cut-out named "Ali Charming bin EvilTerrorist" because that name tells you all the information provided by this book about him. His history and motives are totally unexplored. Great stories have interesting, complicated relationships and bad guys. This isn't one.

Secondly in "The Ugly" category is the disaster of an ending. The moment this story enters the Czech Republic, the author seemed to bump up against a page limit. The fate of the main villain was left to the epilogue, with no dramatic final confrontation, just "he was captured." Total letdown. Very little in the ending is surprising.

Overall, this book reads like an attempt at a Hollywood script that can't decide if it wants to be family redemption drama, love story or action thriller. It has elements of all three, but never enough to satisfy the reader or support the plotline. "A world I never made" could be epic, but is instead stunted and malformed.

I was hooked immediately. Before I knew it I was sitting next to Pat Nolan in Inspector LeGrand's office in Paris stunned about what I had just learned about Megan. Something about this does not feel right. I want to know what Pat Nolan and I are going to do next and I want to know now!

I found this novel to be mildly entertaining, but the author's forceful sociopolitical agenda quickly became both distracting and irritating. The plotline was interesting enough even though the romantic subplot between two of the main characters was poorly developed. Also, the novel's ending was too silly to be taken seriously. But the author's viewpoints on Muslims, abortion and religion eventually become the focus of the novel instead of the plot itself. If you aren't easily distracted by strong sociopolitical overtones, this novel will be a light and somewhat entertaining read. However, if you have a hard time pushing past an intense political message in a book, stay away from this one.

First, I acknowledge that I have not come close to finishing the book. The reason for this is the horrible copyediting. The dialogue consistently ends with colons where periods belong, along with the standard Kindle missing words and typos. It is extremely difficult to try to read the book and distracts from whatever the story line is.

It's a good thing it was free, otherwise I would feel I had wasted my money. There are multiple errors on every Kindle "page," from long dialogues with colons (yes, sometimes more than one!) at the end of every sentence to the regular substitution of bees for aitches in italic passages. There are quotation marks where there should be apostrophes. . . the list goes on. The Kindle edition is so awful, in fact, that it gets in the way of the reading.

Don't bother. It will just take up space on your Kindle and irritate you.

The book had a strong story line and the character interactions went well. The Arab characters had names that were very similar and I had to keep referring back to the pages on which each was initially introduced- but that is not a short coming of the book. There's no other way to identify them and still maintain the credibility of the plot.

I did find the story very confusing- perhaps it is just me, but it took me almost 25% of the book to grasp that there were 2 different time lines- it was obvious that the settings were different for the independent development of the plot(s), but I'd advise any reader to pay attention the chapter headings so you know which calendar year you're in.

There were multiple grammatical errors, punctuations and typos. Normally these items are only a minor annoyance but there were so many of them that they became a definite distraction.

All in all, a good read- I'll do it again now that I know what I'm looking for!

James LePore's debut novel A World I Never Made starts well. Upon arriving in Paris in January, 2004, to visit his daughter, Pat Nolan discovers that she has killed herself and he's required to identify her body. He makes a positive ID, but the body lying in the morgue isn't hers. She's faked her death for some reason, and Pat sets out to find her and find out why she took such an extreme step. The narrative jumps between Pat's story in the narrative present and Megan's story, which begins about a year earlier. Megan has been living it up in Europe for years on the bankrolls of her wealthy lovers. It's that lifestyle, coupled with her post-9/11 interest in terrorism, that's gotten her into her current predicament.

While the book's two storylines remain separate, the book reads well. But in the last fifty-odd pages the stories coalesce as the various parties searching for Megan close in. I found this concluding section of the book confusing, the various secondary characters blending together, the action a bit hard to follow. In the end I'm not quite sure how Pat managed to track Megan down. She allegedly left a trail for him to follow, but it wasn't a particularly clear one. There is also a romantic side story which would have worked well except that the relationship's development is improbably fast. In short, the book has a good premise and it reads well for much of the story, but for me, at least, it falls apart in its last quarter.

-- Debra Hamel

I agree with the review entitled, "the good, the bad and the ugly." I felt that the beginning of the book had plenty of potential to be an excellent story but by reading further I felt that some of the story-lines were a bit unrealistic and the character's were not developed enough.

The major issue I have with the story line is that Pat Nolan (the father) immediately concludes, upon seeing a dead body that is suppose to be his daughter, that she has faked her suicide and he must attempt to find her. This does not seem logical to me. If a parent hears that their only child has committed suicide and then sees a body that is not hers, why would he not tell the police? This is a large leap for me to believe that a man (who hasn't had any communication with his daughter for a long time) suddenly knows--for a fact--that his daughter is in trouble and he must search for her without the help of law enforcement.

Also, I felt that the relationship with Nolan and the French police officer was strained. There needed to be more detail as to how the death of her husband affected her.

Regarding the format of the book on the kindle is really bad. There were so many grammatical errors that is was extremely distracting and annoying. I did buy this book when it was free, so I can make some exception, but I do hope that those errors have been fixed for those who purchase the book.

Overall, I do not recommend purchasing this book as you can find other thrillers that are better written.

This book could have been a really good read but the right wing political ranting against all things Arab and/or Muslim made me feel sorry for the author. As a Jew, I've dealt with enough stereotypical bigotry to last me a lifetime; I certainly don't like to see it aimed at any group. The OCR process with this book, too, was not checked it seems since there were tons of errors.

I can live with the typos but I choose not to live with the hate.