The Best of Times

I finished this book a little over a week ago, but am just now getting around to posting about it.

GREAT book!! Like I mentioned earlier, I've never heard of this author and usually don't grab books randomly. The library closest to me has slim pickins though and with all the books that I'm dying to read on hold, I had to go for something. The cover caught my attention and I was pulled in just from the first line of the inside cover...

"In a matter of seconds, absolutely everything can change..."

It's set in London and is about a group of *at first* separate characters whose lives all intertwine when there is a horrible wreck on the M4 (a highway). When a tractor trailer causes this massive pileup, the stories of the survivors that are waiting for help unfold.

You have a husband that is in the car with his mistress. He shouldn't have even been on that highway according to the story he told his wife.. never mind in the car with a young, attractive woman. A groom and his best man that were trying to get to the church on time... big story as to why he was running so late in the first place. A widow on the way to reunite with a long lost love from 60 years ago... with whom she's written back and forth with throughout all of these years. The driver of the tractor trailer who tortures himself with trying to remember how the wreck was caused in the first place and trying to figure out who his mysterious hitch hiker was that has suddenly disappeared.

There are many more characters intertwined in the book whose lives all get mixed up in the fate of this horrible afternoon. I've said this before, but I LOVE a story that shows many different and at first separate characters that come together and you learn just how much throughout the book. It was a tad bit vulgar at times, but nothing that would shock you. I really couldn't put it down!

After that I read The Looking Glass by Richard Paul Evans. I usually really enjoy his books, but this one.. mmm.. not so much. I finished it, but could have done without.

Off to the library today to find something new and pay some late fines! I better read all the books now while I can!