FEVER (Robin Cook) - December 31/15

It felt like I was reading this forever and I basically barreled through the last 50 pages because I didn't want to go in 2016 with this hanging over my head. There's some good stuff here but Cook bogs the narrative down with a host of completely tedious elements - including (and especially) a subplot involving a local factory that's emitting a poisonous liquid. *1/2 out of ****

THE BEACH HOUSE (Jane Green) - December 18/15

This overlong yet quite readable book fares best in its first half, as Green spends time individually with a series of characters. Once they're all in the title locale, however, the narrative slows down considerably. There's also a far-too-long epilogue. **1/2 out of ****

COLD COLD HEART (Tami Hoag) - December 12/15

Got this one from Lisa. I liked the premise of the book - woman returns home after surviving a brutal attack by a serial killer - but Hoag offers up a narrative that's two times longer than necessary and the book is subsequently suffused with long, long patches that simply aren't all that entertaining. There's a lot of stuff revolving around Dana's recovery and her eventual investigation into her best friend's disappearance seven years earlier, but it's all just so padded out. The final stretch was pretty exciting, admittedly. ** out of ****

TONY AND SUSAN (Austin Wright) - December 5/15

So this one unfolds as two stories: a lady reading her ex-husband's manuscript and the manuscript itself, about a man whose wife and daughter are raped and murdered, and neither is particularly compelling. Most of the problems here stem from Wright's irritating writing style, which consists of short, clipped sentences. His prose reminds me of Ian McEwan if Ian McEwan had no talent. *1/2 out of ****