Tom Booker is a new
attorney at a powerful Washington law firm. Texting while driving across
Memorial Bridge, he loses control and crashes into an oncoming minivan
carrying his own daughter and three of her friends. The minivan tips up
on two wheels, about to flip over into the Potomac. Time freezes, he s
alone on the bridge. A young couple approaches and offers him a re-wind.
The crash would be averted, the children saved. All he must do is kill
someone every two weeks anyone a soul exchange. A moment later, Tom is
back in his spinning car, but averts the deadly crash. He laughs about
the hallucination, attributing it to bumping his head on the steering
wheel when his car came to an abrupt stop. But his encounter wasn t a
hallucination. Two weeks later, the minivan driver is brutally murdered.
Tom receives a text: one down, four to go. He has never shot much less
owned a gun in his life, and now must turn himself into a serial killer
or his daughter and her friends will die.
When I heard about One to Go, I had one of those arms-stretched-out-with-fingers-opening-and-closing-yelling-GIMME! type of reactions. I just knew that I had to get my hands on it or I was going to lose my shit. I thought that the whole premise sounded like it would make for an amazing book and I would do anything I could to get to read it. Unfortunately, it didn't end well for me. Hell, it didn't start well either.
The first thing that just irked me was this one simple word: kind've. Yes, you read it correctly and I put the apostrophe in the same place as the author. The apostrophe (in this instance) signifies that the word should be a contraction. Well, last time I checked, kind and have are not to words that can go together ... ESPECIALLY in the context that they were used in the book: Kind've cool. Negative. I understand that it was a child that was talking at the time but it would have been kind and of going together if anything. Sure, it's in the urban dictionary because that's where these Millennials put all sorts of things that aren't exactly correct English or even things that should be a thing or explained (i.e. the rusty trombone and the dirty Sanchez - don't look those up, no matter how much you want to). Kind've isn't even a damn word. From where this showed up, about 12 pages in, I was already irked at the book.
I also didn't really like the main character, Tom. I thought that he was a narrow-minded, egotistical jerk and I couldn't bring myself to connect with him or his plight. I found him annoying and a coward. Heaven forbid this type of situation (with the having to save a child by killing a crap-ton of people) actually happen and if it did, I don't know how I would react. Maybe his reaction/feelings/actions are exactly how a parent would be but there just wasn't anything that I could grip on to with regards to connecting with Tom. I was happy to see the book end, actually.
Throughout the entire book, the wording felt choppy ... like it was a new driver, learning where the pedals are and how hard to push ... just stomping on the gas and then stomping on the break. The book was jarring to me from the very beginning.
I started this book in October and I'm just now finishing it because I had to put it down so many times. I was hoping that I was just being moody with it and since I have two boys, maybe I was just being sensitive to the situation. But that wasn't the case. Honestly, the only part of the book that I enjoyed was the occasional Latin word and that was only because I studied Latin in high school and I've only gotten to use it at the Vatican and in translating stuff off of US currency for our boys ... and I might throw them in every once in a while into a conversation when I'm being super passive-aggressive.
Anyway ... not the book for me ... I'm glad a lot've (get what I did there?) people have enjoyed this one, it just didn't mesh well with me.
* I received this novel in exchange for an honest review *
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