Lifeguard by James Patterson

From the author's website: The danger isn't in the water.

Working as a lifeguard at a Florida resort, Ned Kelly meets a woman he is wild about, the woman of his dreams. It feels perfect in every way - except that she is used to caviar and Manolo Blahniks, and he is used to burgers and flip-flops. She is a guest at the luxurious hotel - he lives above a garage.

So when Ned's cousin offers to cut him in on a rich deal he's been commissioned to execute, Ned can't turn him down. The plan is simple, just a fast break-and-enter. The risk is high, and the reward is even greater - $5 million. But on the night of the heist, something goes devastatingly wrong. Who will save the lifeguard?

Ned walks away from his job, his town, and the woman he's fallen in love with. Runs away, actually, knowing that only velocity and secrecy can save his life. But who is pursuing him? The FBI? Whoever sabotaged the heist? Or is it all somehow tied into his new love - and his oldest enemies?

This is my third James Patterson and least favorite so far. It was still good but it wasn't great like the others. It wasn't the narration - the narrator had a great voice and the whole man talking like a woman thing wasn't as annoying as it sometimes can be. It wasn't the plot - the plot was interesting. I didn't figure all of it out until the end. (There was one major clue that kept getting overlooked that grated on my nerves. Because it was so obvious that I noticed it, all of the characters should have spied it as well.) So it's hard to put my finger on what made this book less appealing than the others. There was a little more sex - when I read a novel with a sex scene, I can just skim through and kind of ignore it. I'm not exactly a prude, but it's not for me. When you are listening to an audio book, you're kind of stuck in the moment. You can't skip ahead or you may miss some piece of dialogue that's crucial, you can't close your eyes, stick your fingers in your ear and sing "la-la-la, I'm not hearing this!" because you're driving. So the sex is there to stay. And then the main character who narrates much of the books (if not all - memory is not always good) sometimes used flowery language that didn't really seem to suit his character. Yes, he was the lifeguard with the degree, slumming it on the beach, but it still seemed strange. These two things were enough to take this book down a notch for me. I still think James Patterson is a great read and I will be excited when another of his audio books comes my way but this was not a home run.

This is one of my books for the 2009 Audio book Challenge. 11/12 completed on that one - click on the button to see how it's going!






and this one too...
This is on my list for the Spring Reading Thing 2009. Click on the logo to see the rest of my list.