The President’s Shadow by Brad Meltzer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Before the rest of this review, let me say that I deeply enjoy Meltzer’s premise with this series. It’s basically, “wow, presidential history is really neat, let me make it into a mystery novel about a nerdy archivist!”
I totally love that.
This book? I only kinda liked. It just didn’t grab me like some of the others have, and I found one character flat-out annoying, another hard to relate to, and a third predictably mustache-twirling. I’d still really like to have dinner with the protagonist, but the rest of the book was just…meh. Maybe it’s always been that way and I just now noticed it, but the chapters in this book were remarkably short and jumpy, and it kept me from feeling like I could really get into the story when I knew I’d just be jumping heads in about 2 pages. I feel like Meltzer was reaching for something more ominous for this one, but it just fell flat for me. Maybe I can jump back on the bandwagon with the next book.
M.E. Kinkade 