No Heart-Stopper

I borrowed this book from my mother's collection of true-crime stories. The cover blurb indicates the story is thrilling, but I found it more plodding than anything else. While the book is at times well-written, the frequent references to captivating news coverage made me wonder what all the excitement was about. The book initially mixes chapters about the seven-year enslavement with chapters about the preparation for the trial, then about the stories merge about halfway through the book. This itself is confusing for the reader, but also takes away from the story of the enslavement. Those chapters would have been better if left in one sequence, because the reader would have gained some sense of the victim's isolation rather than being constantly snatched into another time. All of the scenes featuring the District Attorney, though, seem contrived. She is almost never painted in a negative light, but is rather described very favorably, making it impossible to forget that she co-wrote the book itself. Despite the expected sensationalism of the book (I'd be surprised if a true crime book wasn't sensationalized), the story is not titillating at any time. I found myself waiting for it to be over.