BORING. The book was not what I expected from so many 4-star ratings given to it.

The lead character in the book is Jennifer Parker, a young lawyer. The author makes you think in the beginning of the book that she has integrity in her personal life and work. Jennifer’s mom had left her dad for some young guy and she hates people who cheat to the very core. Then she herself starts having affair with a married man, twice!

Sheldon purposes makes Jennifer win cases which logically could not be possible. An example: She makes a promiscuous woman win a paternity case against a rich socialite with very good character. Jennifer makes the jury believe that the kid is that guy’s son just because the ‘dad’ kept licking his lower lip when nervous and the kid was also licking his lips ( Jennifer’s trick: Fed the kid corn syrup before the court hearing ). Would you believe that?! Another example: A man is acquitted of a murder even though he has a reputation of being violent, even when there were no witnesses to say that he killed in self defense, even when there were countless witnesses who saw him kill!

Worst of all is the lack of integrity in Jennifer’s character, she hates people who cheat and then she only starts sleeping with married men. She first seems to fight for good, but then she just becomes the Italian mafia king Michael Moretti’s pawn to defend rapists and murderers.

Will probably never read another Sheldon book.

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My rating: 3 of 5 stars

SMOOTH. It was a smooth, fairly quick read. I liked Sara way of using the metaphors that exactly give us the idea of the emotions the character is going through. I also liked the way she kept on switching the narration, at right times, between the life of 93-yr old Jacob in a geriatric home and his life in Benzini Brothers circus when he was young.

This book is a wonderful historical fiction that describes how circuses used to be always in motion from one town to another on trains in 1930′s. She talks about the social barrier between the working class people and the performers, the process of setting up and dismantling a circus when moving on to the next town, jake paralysis, detail description of few circus acts. An interesting touch to the story is that Sara has weaved in real life circus incidents into this fiction.

The character development of Jacob, Walter and Camel were very good, but I kept expecting more on the development of Marlena’s character. Her character turns out to be a bit boring, flat and lacking in detail. Without adding spoilers, I would like to add that after reading you might also realize that the climax was not totally justified for the villain.

In one part of the book where Jacob keeps on saying the same “,but he hit her” to different characters, it seemed very ridiculous and funny to me even though that was not meant to be funny. Things like this, lack of character building and predictability of the plot makes me give it a 3/5.

But I would give the historical fiction portion of this book a 4/5.

Note to parents: Not appropriate for kids.

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I donated for a good cause.  Like you, I also had qualms that what if I donate unknowingly to a scam, which in fact will NOT help the people in Haiti.

So I did a small research (googling).

After reading about Doctors Without Borders from many sources, I decided to donate to this organization.  What’s pitiful is that this organization already had 3 hospitals in Haiti but all all of them have become inoperable because of the earthquake; 1 fell down, 2 are too unstable and unsafe and so, got abandoned.

More Doctors Without Borders volunteers are being flown to Haiti as they are short in staff and supplies .

So there you go, click on the above pic, donate, do your good deed of the day!