jayvall reviewed Impersonation by Heidi Pitlor
Review of 'Impersonation' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
This is one of those books where I misunderstood the book blurb. I thought it was going to be about a ghostwriter who started to take on her subject's life, Single White Female style. So for a lot of the book, I kept waiting for the thriller aspect to start. It took me to about 40% before I realized this was not going to be the book I thought it was and although I didn't love where the book was going, I decided to stick it out.
Overall, I was just bored by this. I wish it had been more tightly plotted and there had been more true-to-life consequences for Allie doing the thing she didn't want to do. I also kept waiting for the author to reveal that Norton was adopted, or really Gloria's son, or something to explain why Lara had no stories about him as a baby …
This is one of those books where I misunderstood the book blurb. I thought it was going to be about a ghostwriter who started to take on her subject's life, Single White Female style. So for a lot of the book, I kept waiting for the thriller aspect to start. It took me to about 40% before I realized this was not going to be the book I thought it was and although I didn't love where the book was going, I decided to stick it out.
Overall, I was just bored by this. I wish it had been more tightly plotted and there had been more true-to-life consequences for Allie doing the thing she didn't want to do. I also kept waiting for the author to reveal that Norton was adopted, or really Gloria's son, or something to explain why Lara had no stories about him as a baby other than she was just a disaffected mother. Also, as much as Allie balked at putting all of that highbrow discourse on breastfeeding, birth plans, and attachment parenting in Lara's memoir, I wish Pitlor had also skipped it. It dragged an already slow book down and at some point I just started skipping large swaths of anything without dialogue because I didn't care.