All The Difference by Kaira Rouda

Why did I decide to read this book? It is our book club book for next month. Why is it our book club book for next month? Because one of the members - the next one up, in fact, since we take turns alphabetically choosing the next book - found a box containing ten copies of this book on her doorstep. Sounds like kittens that we found on our doorstep in another time and another place. Apparently, she had signed up for something and had registered our book club as well - and here they came. Many books simply come with discussion questions for book clubs these days - and maybe this is an extension of that idea. It may also be a last ditch effort to sell an unsaleable item.

The blurb billed it as the stories of three women - I never could count them, but there were certainly more than three whose lives were improbably intertwined. Then there was the italicized abused child whose catastrophe (you could hardly call it a life) is interspersed throughout and is never clearly identified, although the reader is supposed to make an assumption.

It is written in the ADD point of view. The writer starts narrating about a character - when she encounters another character, she suddenly starts narrating from the new person's perspective. (OOOO, look, a bird!!) No one is to insignificant to have his or her thinking explicated on the page. For a women's story, the writer spends an awful lot of time in the minds of the men in the story, probably because she wants to leave absolutely no doubt about what complete sleazes they all are. Of course, the women are pretty petty and generally nasty, too.

The blurb also calls it a murder mystery which kept him/her guessing clear to the end. He/she must either be remarkably dense or an experienced blurber who no longer considers it necessary to actually read the book. The murderer is obvious from the beginning - well, actually from the middle, where the first murder occurs. Rouda does try to drag some red herrings across the trail, but with limited success.

There is a remarkable shortage of plot. There are lots of events, but not what I would consider an organized plot. The characters are shallow, one-dimensional, and universally unlikeable. The action is pointless. And, she uses make an model of car to define social status for everyone. I never read so many Lexus's and BMWs and Mercedes is a comparatively few pages in my entire life.

So - why was I up until four am finishing it? I think there were two reasons, first - I couldn't sleep anyway - and second - I was afraid that if I put it down, I would never pick it up again. Fortunately, our book club hostess for next month also gave us the title of the book she had intended to make her choice before she received these freebees. I think I still have enough money to purchase it immediately.