I had such high hopes for The Unfortunates by Sophie McManus, but unfortunately …
I had chosen it as the book to start off my summer reading season, a season I had high hopes for. As you know, so far 2015 hasn’t been the best reading year for me so far. I was plagued with a vicious head cold when I read it, and that did not help matters. I found the prose to be very choppy and at times hard to follow. Was it me? Or was it the book?
The story is billed as
a dramatic story of pharmaceutical drug trials and Wall Street corruption; of pride and prejudice; of paranoia and office politics; of inheritance, influence, class, and power.
Sounds good, right? But it didn’t pan out. I found the characters to be very one dimensional, flat and predictable. There was some interesting class commentary, but not enough to sustain the novel.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley for review consideration.
52 books or bust 
Bummer… this is on my 20 Books of Summer reading challenge list!
Maybe you’ll like it more than I did.
First of all, that pitch is misleading. Did you find that the drug trial aspect was even that major a plot point? I didn’t. It didn’t even show up unitl the final 1/4 of the book! As you know, I couldn’t even finish this book. It wasn’t your head cold, it read like a rough draft with stereotypical characters. Very disappointing.
The drug trials were the whole reason I wanted to read the book. Something really interesting could have been done with that. In the final 1/4 there was some character development, but in general it felt very much like a first novel in rough draft.
Oh, how disappointing! I hope your summer reading only gets better from here 🙂