Title: Be Careful What You Wish For
Author: Jeffrey Archer
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 466
Rating: 8/10
Jeffrey Archer – Be Careful What You Wish For
Disclaimer: While I aim to be unbiased, I received a copy of this for free to review.
This is a bit of an odd one, because although I was sent this book for free to review, it wasn’t from the author or one of his publishers. In fact, it was sent to me by StressFreePrint as part of their stress free reading package, and so the same book went out to a bunch of different bloggers who’ll all be reviewing it on their sites.
Now, I’m not a fan of Jeffrey Archer, but I base that entirely upon his history and personality. It turns out that his writing is impressive, and I begrudgingly admit that I really enjoyed reading it, despite that it’s the fourth volume in a series, the Clifton Chronicles. It’s refreshing to read a book from a series that d0esn’t rely on the reader having read the other volumes, and so despite the fact that many of the members of the two family trees have appeared in previous novels, I settled in to it easily.
In fact, despite the fact that it’s largely set in the sixties, the setting of the novel is easy to understand, and you can really picture yourself there in London or in Belfast as a great cruise ship is being built. The building of the ship itself is central to the story-line, although the highlights are the deaths which are scattered throughout the novel, masterminded by Don Pedro Martinez, the novel’s antagonist.
Jeffrey Archer
In fact, I was surprised that so many characters which are central to the story-line ended up dying – if this is part of the series, surely Archer isn’t going to have many characters left for the next novel, unless he’s planning on introducing some new ones. That said, it made it genuinely exciting and the constant twists and turns left you gagging for more, and I’ve gone from being a ‘hater‘ to, at the very least, a mild admirer. I wouldn’t mind reading more of the series, so perhaps I should go back and start at the beginning, to see what I’ve missed.
So all in all, I’m almost ashamed to say that Jeffrey Archer has impressed me, and I’m not a convert – his writing is pretty good, and although my feelings about him as a person haven’t necessarily changed, I do have a newfound respect for him. I’ll be interested to see how the Clifton Chronicles series continues to evolve over time, and to see what in the world could possibly happen next after the cliffhanger ending in this book. Oh dear, did I forget to mention that?
Jeffrey Archer Quote
