Fragile by Lisa Unger

Title: Fragile
Author: Lisa Unger
Series: #1 in the Jones Cooper series
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Publisher: Crown; (July 28, 2010)
Source: Library Find
Rating: ☕☕1/2

Synopsis: Everybody knows everybody in The Hollows, a quaint, charming town outside of New York City. It's a place where neighbors keep an eye on one another's kids, where people say hello in the grocery store, and where high school cliques and antics are never quite forgotten. As a child, Maggie found living under the microscope of small-town life stifling. But as a wife and mother, she has happily returned to The Hollows's insular embrace. As a psychologist, her knowledge of family histories provides powerful insights into her patients' lives. So when the girlfriend of her teenage son, Rick, disappears, Maggie's intuitive gift proves useful to the case--and also dangerous.

The investigation has her husband, Jones, the lead detective on the case, acting strangely.  Rick, already a brooding teenager, becomes even more withdrawn.  In a town where the past is always present, nobody is above suspicion, not even a son in the eyes of his father.

Determined to uncover the truth, Maggie pursues her own leads into Charlene's disappearance and exposes a long-buried town secret--one that could destroy everything she holds dear.

My Thoughts: While the ending was quite good the entire book was bogged down by an excruciatingly slow pace and so many characters it was hard to keep track of them all.

The Good: The last 25% of the book was quite interesting and Unger did a great job of wrapping things up in a very believable way. I actually enjoyed reading how everything was interwoven and discovering everyone's secrets. Of course by the time I got to the 75% mark I opted to skim read the last part to just get through it. This doesn't bode well for any book, IMHO.

The Bad: As mentioned above, the extremely slow pacing of the book made the first half seem overly long and really boring. In addition, Unger added almost two dozen characters, either by mention or by an actual appearance, which  made the first half confusing, not to mention there were no characters who I actually liked. Out of all of them! During the course of the book I thought about stopping the book and adding it to my DNF list several times.

In a Nutshell: Even though the ending was rather good I couldn't get over the first half of the book being so...well, not good. I usually give an author at least 2 tries but I'm seriously thinking of not picking up another Unger again, if this book is a testament to how she writes.