Update Review: Those Sleeping Dogs Sucked

So, I told you I would come back and let you know what I thought of “Let Sleeping Dogs Lie” by Mirjam Pressler.

Click here if you're okay with Spoilers!



WASTE of my overdue book fee!
What was most disappointing about this book, was that it had all the great parts of a plot: Nazi grandfather, bold/brave granddaughter to blow the whistle, tragic past, feuding family members, money, mystery, etc.
I kept waiting for the real story to start. It never did. Every time it began to take flight, the author would bring it right back down to boring. Really sad too, because like I said it had all the plot elements to create great drama.
First of all, there were too many flash-ins and flash-outs. I usually like those kind of stories, where they go from the present to the past and things like that, but in this case, they were hard to follow and I had to keep going back and re-reading things to make sure I was keeping up. That was annoying.
My other problem was with the fact that for all that flashing back she did, she never really gave a good look at what was going on. I got glimpses of what had taken place, but not a real idea of who or what I was supposed to feel for these characters. None of them were well developed.
When writing a book like this, you really need to give me a main character who I care about. Johanna was boring. I didn’t care about her feelings. I didn’t care about her stupid relationship with her lame boyfriend. I didn’t care about her. There was no real setting for me either, and I kept forgetting that the events were supposed to be taking place in the late 90’s.
Overall, I would have rather seen Ms. Pressler take all these elements and retell the story from a more passionate point of view. As righteous as Johanna was, in the end she just sounded like a brat who wanted to whine about her family. Nothing was even accomplished. It began to read like a boring romance novel from the 80’s.
Mrs.Tiye's Thoughts: 2/5 for great plot elements but no story.