Paullina Simons - Eleven Hours

I had an evening appointment to donate blood so I needed a thin book that would be easy to hold, especially when I would be lying down and trying to pump blood at the same time! This fit the bill perfectly so I brought it along with me. This was a really quick read; I finished more than half of it during the whole blood donation process and I finished the rest of it at home after dinner. It may not be the most original story (I kept feeling that I had seen or read this before but I hadn't) and the plot was pretty transparent and predictable (like how the hell is it NOT obvious that the killer is after the baby?!), but it was still no less of a page-turner. This book reads like a movie screenplay and with the vivid descriptions, I could picture the scenes in my head and imagine what was going on, which kept me wanting more. What didn't fit quite right in the book - to me anyway - were the religious subtexts included in the novel. If Paullina Simons was trying to tie in a religious message that God has a plan for everything, I think it was a half-baked attempt to just throw in the conclusion at the end that God was looking out for the protagonist and it was his doing that sent Didi to the killer so she could do his work by finishing him off. Right, how convenient. I think the author should have paid more thought to it if she wanted to weave in a religious overtone to the novel; if she wasn't going to do it properly, then she should have just ditched that concept completely. Despite its flaws, it was still a fairly exciting read overall and it did its job of keeping me entertained while waiting around to get poked with a needle. That's good enough for me!