Thursday, January 7, 2016

The Marauders - Tom Cooper

I wanted so badly to love this book.  I love reading stories about my hometown/state.  And I don't get insulted by the representation.  Although the representation in this book was pretty spot on.  With that said even with a fairly accurate depiction of life in Southeast Louisiana I didn't enjoy this book.

I kept reading reviews about how creative, funny, and well written is was.  Even on the back cover there is a quote from one of my favorite authors (Stephen King), so I thought there is no way this book can fail.  I was wrong.  For me it was uninteresting, bordering on boring and honestly the writing was just okay.    And I didn't laugh...not even a snicker.  I am not trying to be a jerk, I really just could not get into the story enough to love it, much less even like it. 

The premise is interesting.  What happens to a Louisiana still reeling from the destruction of Hurricane Katrina when the BP Oil Spill happens.  We are following the lives of shrimpers, a BP middleman who is from the area, criminals, and "drug lords".  The story just fell flat.  It would start to sort of ramp up and then, blah, nothing.  How many times do you have to say Wes blames his father for his mother's death.  How many times do I have to be told that Lindquist is a pill popping shrimper missing an arm.  How many times must we elaborate on what a waste of space Cosgrove and Hanson are.  Oh and did I mention there is all this talk of Jean Lafitte's lost "treasure".  This story is a bit all over the place. 

I won't go more into detail because I really didn't enjoy it enough to retain much detail.  And really there are quite a few details.  I hate to be so hard on a book because usually I am a very kind reader but I just can't say much nice about it.  We get a decent ending but over all the book is dark with attempts at humor that fall flat. 

I give it 2.5 stars.  Give it a try if you want, you may like it.  It just wasn't my cup of tea. 

I received this book for free from Blogging for Books to read and give my honest review.

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