PUDDLES
By Lynn Barry
AmErica House - November 2001
ISBN: 1588511391 - Paperback

Reviewed by: Nancy Marie, MyShelf.com
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PUDDLES is a soap-opera in paperback form. It tells the story of one woman's journey through heartache and betrayal to healing and reconciliation. Beginning with her teenage daughter's sexual indiscretion to her neighbor's hidden secrets to the trials of having a husband that is a weekly commuter, PUDDLES takes the reader on a journey into the daily life of a soap-opera style housewife. It is complete with all the twists and turns of any television soap, but moves much more quickly.

PUDDLES is extremely easy to read, and Barry seems to have a natural gift for story-telling. The characters, for the most part, are well developed, and the dialogue is realistic and believable. However, unlike some of the more famous story-tellers such as Ernest Hemmingway, Barry does not appear to have had the benefit of a good editor. There are a couple of plot problems and numerous mechanical errors which range from improper usage of quotation marks and capitalization, to poor word choices, to verb tense confusion, and sentence structure inaccuracies.

As a writer, I must admit that these errors were distracting. However, as a reader, I also have to admit that the story caught and held my attention, and that I read the whole book in about five hours. The ease with which the story reads makes it an ideal book to take to the beach, or on a journey where one needs a light, entertaining distraction rather than a heavy tome to meditate upon.

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Nancy Marie is the author of When You Wish Upon A Star.

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