Book Twentyfour: Flower Net

Flower Net, Lisa See



This was a freebie at my book club--actually this plus the other two in the series--and I couldn't resist it. A mystery set in China? Sign me up! It's not that it was bad, but it just wasn't quite as good as I wanted it to be. There were even elements of Chinese medicine in there (which was quite accurate, I'm happy to report) and part of the story was set in Chengdu, which I loved. However, not all of the pieces came together for me. The romance between the two main characters was pretty clunky and, I thought, unnecessary, and the ending left me thinking, "Meh." But there was also some interesting stuff about the Cultural Revolution, Chinese organized crime, and some lovely descriptions of Chinese culture and food that made me miss China just a tiny bit.

Also, I could only read this imagining the movie playing in my head, and I couldn't decide if that was bad or good. I have never read a book that feels so much like a movie. I mean, it seemed almost as if it was transcribed from a movie, which was totally weird. Perhaps it's that my only exposure to this genre has been in the movies so that's all I could picture, but I'm thinking that's only the partial truth. This was Lisa See's first attempt at a mystery/thriller and maybe that's all she could see in her head, too. Just a thought.

I have the other two books in the series sitting around, so I'm sure at some point I'll pick them up. This was a pretty fast read and perhaps Lisa See worked through some of the clunkiness of this first book in the next two. We'll see.