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Book Summary InformationAuthor: Lisa Scottoline Edition: Hardcover Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published) Published: 2009-04-14 ISBN: 0312380720 Number of pages: 352 Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Book Reviews of Look AgainBook Review: "Will wasn't born to her, but she was born to be his mother." Summary: 4 Stars
In Lisa Scottoline's "Look Again," Ellen Gleeson is a reporter for a Philadelphia newspaper that is experiencing cutbacks, and she fears that she may be the next employee to get the ax. Her ace in the hole, besides the fact that she is very good at what she does, is that her editor and boss, Marcelo Cardoso, "a sexy Brazilian," seems to have a thing for her (and the feeling is entirely mutual). She secretly thinks of Marcelo as "Antonio Banderas with a journalism degree." Ellen needs her job because she is supporting not only herself but also a three-year-old child named Will. She found him when she was doing a story about nurses in a hospital's pediatric intensive care unit. At the age of eighteen months, he was a patient being treated for a heart problem, and she fell in love with him. When Ellen finds out that his unwed mother wants to give him up, she arranges to adopt him. Since then, Will has become a healthy toddler who is the center of her life. Thanks to a devoted babysitter, Connie Mitchell, Ellen is able to pursue her career and be a good mother to her son.
Everything changes when Ellen receives a card in the mail with pictures of missing children. One of the boys, Timothy Braverman, bears an uncanny resemblance to Will. She dismisses her initial reaction, praying that this is merely one of those bizarre and inexplicable coincidences. However, as she looks into the matter further, she fears that her son's history may be a bit more complicated than she realized.
Scottoline captures the dog-eat-dog world of print journalism, a moribund business in which a reporter's next story may be her last. Now that "the epicenter of breaking news had moved to the Internet," no one's job is safe. One of Ellen's colleagues, Sarah Liu, is an aggressive and manipulative woman who does her best to discredit Ellen, hoping to save her own position. As everyone waits for the other shoe to drop, Ellen goes on a Web site devoted to the return of Timothy Braverman. She is horrified to discover that the resemblance between Will and Timothy is too striking to be ignored.
The author makes the most of her supercharged plot. Ellen puts her work on the back burner, and plays private detective in an attempt to discover the link between Timothy and Will. She unearths shocking information and learns of several suspicious deaths that raise serious questions about what is really going on. If what she begins to suspect turns out to be true, Ellen may lose the one person she loves most of all. The scenes between Ellen and her little boy are beautifully crafted; she gives her son tender loving care, but when it is needed, she disciplines him with understanding, intelligence, and humor. Should she keep quiet and hope that her secret stays buried, or should she pursue her investigation to its possibly bitter end? This is a classic page-turner, in which the reader learns, along with the protagonist, that nothing is at it seems, although there are enough clues to guess what is happening well before the explosive conclusion. Scottoline has a rat-a-rat writing style that keeps the action moving along briskly. Although the plot is far from realistic, in a genre thriller, the rules are a bit more flexible. If the writer generates a fair amount of suspense, holds our interest throughout, and doesn't insult our intelligence egregiously, the book may be deemed a success. As an escapist novel with no pretentions to be anything more, "Look Again" gets high marks.
Summary of Look AgainWhen reporter Ellen Gleeson gets a ?Have You Seen This Child?? flyer in the mail, she almost throws it away. But something about it makes her look again, and her heart stops?the child in the photo is identical to her adopted son, Will. Her every instinct tells her to deny the similarity between the boys, because she knows her adoption was lawful. But she?s a journalist and won?t be able to stop thinking about the photo until she figures out the truth. And she can?t shake the question: if Will rightfully belongs to someone else, should she keep him or give him up? She investigates, uncovering clues no one was meant to discover, and when she digs too deep, she risks losing her own life?and that of the son she loves. Lisa Scottoline breaks new ground in Look Again, a thriller that?s both heart-stopping and heart-breaking, and sure to have new fans and book clubs buzzing.
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