Relief Read 10 - Found Wanting

Found Wanting by Robert Goddard

Charity Shop: Shelter, Newcastle upon Tyne (P.S. upon entering I realised this was the charity shop I got the Princess diaries from, so as I failed to credit it last time, I bought another book from there)

Charity: Shelter is a charity that works to alleviate the distress caused by homelessness and bad housing.

Price: £1

Book Blurb: 'The car jolts to a halt at the pavement's edge, the driver waving through the windscreen to attract Richard's attention. He starts with astonishment. The driver is Gemma, his ex-wife. // He has not seen or spoken to her for several years. They have, she memorably assured him, nothing to say to each other. But something has changed her mind - something urgent...' // Immediately Richard is catapulted into a breathless race against time that takes him from London, across northern Europe and into the heart of a mystery that reaches back into history - the fate of Anastasia, the last of the Romanovs. From that moment, Richard's life will be changed for ever in ways he could never have imagined...

Expectation: A light-hearted thriller. Probably involving bad guys and deaths

Reality: A light-hearted thriller! I liked this book from the start as the characters lived in Guildford and studied at Cambridge. However that was a side note, and as promised in the blurb the story was set all over Europe. The chase begins almost immediately, but starts off quite gently as a man helping an old friend. Richard slowly gets more and more involved to lead to extreme actions that would have been unimaginable at the beginning. His motivation is not always clear, both to the reader and to himself, but clarity is achieved by the end.
Also I love the clever title.

Overall Rating

It was a struggle           2        3        4        5        6        7        8       9      Gripping page  

to make it                                                                                                        turner

I did like the book, but it's just so far-fetched that I knocked off a couple of marks.

Twist Scale:

Knew the beginning,                                                                                 As twisty as the 

middle and end         2       3        4         5       6        7        8        9      bendy wendy road

from the first line 

Nothing was particularly shocking but there were a lot of twists and turns. The core of the mystery is not terrible, but a perfect example of the frog in boiling water analogy, as a small lie turned into something so terrible.

Tear-jerker Scale:

 As dry as a house       2        3       4         5         6         7       8        9     Cried an ocean

 throughout

Not a tear-jerker but main characters did die, which was sad.

Moral of the Story: I'm not really sure. Money does strange things to people...

***

Coming up: Readers digest compilation of 4 books. First up Nights of Rain and Stars.