Almost Touching the Skies: Women's Coming of Age Stories Book

Everything about this book is terrible. The writing is sloppy (once you've written 800+ books, do you get a free pass on editing?), the plot is predictable and contrived, the characters are flat, and the theme of belief in the face of despair is bludgeoned in with no finesse.

Spoilers Ahead! (Kind of. This book is so predictable it'd be hard to spoil.)

The whole storyline is weak, but the ending is almost fantastically ridiculous. The previously comatose mother wakes up saves the day in the courtroom - a plot device pulled out of a made-for-TV movie. And I cringed at the "afterward" written by future Lou. She grows up to be a famous, wealthy writer, her brother grows up to win a World Series with the Yankees. Everyone's dreams come true. It's fairytale ending that even Cinderella would have trouble believing. If Baldacci had ever treated his characters/setting/subject matter with irony or even subtlety, I might have wondered if the afterward was playful meta-fiction, to be taken with a grain of salt. But, no, just straightforward drivel.

Quite simply, there are better books out there.