Karen Kingsbury
Center Street
Release date: January 6, 2009
List price: $14.99 (352p)
ISBN: 978-1599956787
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Review - "This Side of Heaven"
Reviewer: Cori Vella
Rating:
Don't get me wrong, I love a good tear-jerker. But what I don't love is when authors try to manipulate the emotions of their readers. That's seriously not cool. Karen Kingsbury's This Side of Heaven features a drunk driver, a devoted father, a heartless mother, a question of paternity, an obnoxious family that I know I'm supposed to feel sympathy for, but I don't, and a lot of emotional manipulation. Like I said before, seriously not cool.
Josh Warren was struck by a drunk driver while saving the lives of two teenage girls. What results is a disabling back condition that prevents him from working.
Josh is in the midst of an insurance trial, hoping to get enough money from the settlement so that he can claim the little girl that resulted from a Vegas one-night stand. The girl's Baby Mama is supposed to be the villain in all this — a one-dimensional piece of cardboard that demands nothing but money. She is, of course, portrayed as the worst kind of evil.
But the real villain in all this is Annie Warren, Josh's judgmental, holier-than-thou mother. She does not believe that Josh truly suffers as much as he claims he does, nor does she believe that the little girl in question is his. She does nothing but get on his case.
But then, of course, Josh accidently overdoses on his pain medications and dies. Instead of regretting her actions, changing her ways, or even feeling any kind of remorse, Annie sets about trying to claim Josh's insurance settlement. Her plans are foiled when the lawyer reveals that Josh intended to leave the money to his daughter, Savannah. Annie fights to keep the money out of the hands of Evil Incarnate Baby Mama, ends up falling in love with Savannah, ya-da-ya-da.
What results is a book that strives for the emotional catharsis of Jodi Picoult or Nicolas Sparks, but fails miserably. Kingsbury tries to force her authorial opinion of the characters onto the reader in a hopeless attempt to make the reader "feel" something for these characters. And yes, I do feel something for them: hate. Annoyance. Downright anger. Annie Warren is the most selfish kind of woman, a literary beast of a character that, if existing in real life, would deserve a good, old-fashioned bitchslapping.
Tossing this book against the wall or in a trashcan would be an appropriate response. I'm tempted to do so now. It's not worth even the two seconds it would take to glance at the cover.
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