The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

I only blog about books that I've completed. But you should know that for every four or five books that I review here, there is at least one book that I tried to read and decided not to finish. It's a good thing I borrow books from the library instead of buying them.

How do I decide if I'm going to finish a book? As a general rule, I read the first 50 pages before I decide. And at any point, I stop reading if any of the following are true:

-I don't look forward to reading the book.
-I keep checking to see how many pages are left.
-The author doesn't use quotation marks when people are speaking.


This is a book that I didn't finish. I was so looking forward to reading it because I'm a Barbara Kingsolver fan. It was flat and not at all up to what I expect from Kingsolver. It really didn't even seem like it was Kingsolver's writing.

So after reading 250 of the 500 pages (I was really waiting for it to get better!), I put it down and returned it to the library. I pre-ordered it to give to my sister as a birthday present, but the book was so terrible that I unwrapped it, and returned it to Amazon.

All I can say about this book is: What happened, Barbara???