I'm a Philly girl so I love Lisa Scottoline, but this book didn't have the same thrill as her others. It's very well researched about the challenges of low income special needs students and the foster care system in PA, but at times iT felt like an instructional manual on how to adopt rather than a suspense novel. The only real suspense was whether the adoption would happen. The mystery lacked oomph and danger. Despite that it was a pleasant read.

Despite writing mysteries myself (YA), I haven't read a lot of James Patterson. He's a master, so there is a lot to learn here. While I enjoyed the plot & some minor characters, like the Irish girlfriend, I wasn't crazy about 3 mysteries going on at the same time. It didn't allow me to feel invested in any of them. Overall, I enjoyed the story, but felt more attention could have been put on the artistry and language.

"I took the off-ramp at Carrillo Street in Santa Barbara and got back on the 101, this time heading south back toward LA."

Not to criticize a master like James Patterson, but there are so many references to directions around Los Angeles, that I'm starting to feel like I'm reading an SNL version of the "Californians."

I am about 60,000 words into Book 3 of the Anastasia Phoenix series, and when I am writing, I exclusively only read books in the same genre. Anastasia Phoenix is a trilogy of thrillers, so I'm reading James Patterson, king of thrillers.

From PRIVATE: "Sometimes I tried to reason and said calmly, 'Just tell me what you want.' This morning when the voice said, "You're dead, 'I said "Not yet.' I snapped the phone closed."

"There are moments in your life when you know that everything is about to change. Time is it whizzing by, your mind isn't in a blur, you're in it, living it, and you know, consciously, that your world will never be the same again. You will never be the same again. And I knew, somewhere in the hollow of my being, that this was one of those moments... I had never been more awake or alert in my life. And I didn't want to open that door."