A song for the asking Book

As I sit here trying to pen a review for Gannon's A Song for the Asking, I find myself struggling. Reading through the book, my anticipated star rating jumped from 2 to 3, to 5 to 4 in one sitting.

Rather than explain discretely I will simply provide a SPOILER RIDDEN response to the text.

In the beginning Gannon introduces Travis and Thomas (Tommy) Kane, using the age old technique of having main characters discuss their deep emotional issues, and summarize their entire characters in a few pages of dialogue we find out Tommy and Travis have daddy issues (1 star)

Then they embark on an actually quite tense climb (3 stars) that abruptly cuts out and we go back in time a few months (1 star again)

The story then introduces Kane himself (the daddy causing the issues) and the rest of the family. At this point I would describe this book as an Alex Cross novel with the balance of focus on family rather than police procedure. Although Gannon still finds time to have Kane leaping through windows and blasting ethnic bad-guys while getting gip from his superiors.

We also find out about Kane's ridiculous parenting skills, Travis' struggle with musicianship, and Kane's wife's inability to recognize a drunken terrible father when she is written in next to one.

The first 1-2 parts of the novel are in themselves completely bizarre. While Kane is presented as being a total prick to his family the story didn't really gel as to what the central plot was - were we meant to attach to Kane and hope he redeemed himself? Or busted a criminal bad-guy, or maybe we are supposed to feel for his children (and essentially hope Kane gets run over by a bus.) I assumed that Gannon was attempted to make us empathize with each character, however the effort came across too shallow, and his style left me worried that Gannon actually supported Kane's approach.

Anyway MAJOR SPOILERS FROM NOW the book plods along reading like an awkward confessional autobiography when abruptly shit gets terrible. Kane's daughter Allison is brutally raped by intruders, and Nate the youngest boy witnesses it and slaughters the crims with his dads firearm (none of this is revealed to anyone else in the plot, except slightly Travis) This scene of any in the book is horrifying well written, and while reading I found myself mesmerized with tension and disgust (5 stars).

Disturbingly this is the peak of the book. Despite being the most tense scene, the book then revolves around Travis and Tommy (3 stars), and how their climbing trip ends in disaster, which simultaneously gives Travis the emotional depth to succeed at music, but causes Kane to plunge into a drunken spiral resulting in him assaulting his entire family (4 stars for guts).

SOMEHOW from this Travis and Kane make-up and it is implied Kane is not ostracized from the family (WTF 1 star)

I hope this rant has somehow clarified my struggle to rate this book, on the one hand it was surprising and tragic, on the other it was weirdly plotted and stupidly feel good in conclusion.

Ultimately I guess pretty darn good for a selfie (although a few word substitutions in there [microsoft word doesn't pick those up so well])