Rachel's Reviews > Manhattan Beach

I should be careful with books on 'Best of' lists...they always seem to be similar to Oscar winning movies. All pretension and fluff, and minimal substance/actual story line. This book was just simply bad. I felt like I had been given an assignment to read 'an important literary book' and I dreaded every single time I put my ear plugs in to listen to it.

It showed promise, but had such disparate and unrelated story lines (there are a total of 8 parts in the book), that it just was not well done. Being able to use elaborate words and phrases to describe how a peplum was added to a shirt to make it more contemporary does not a good book make! Ms. Egan has won a Pulitzer for a previous book, but I am still shocked this was on 'Best of 2017' lists - it does not deserve it at all.