The Prodigal Daughter

The follow-up to Kane & Abel had so much momentum that it carried me halfway through the sequel.

I started this on vacation when I read more and just have fewer distractions and can really dig into a book. For the first chapters, I was still rolling along from Kane & Abel, but then “The Prodigal Daughter” dragged towards the end with the senate and her work in DC.

I have to admit, I was crushed that her husband died! The whole Kane & Abel combination wiped out right there. Then she’s going to marry Edward at the end of this book (sorry, yeah, spoiler, but not really).

I felt that Kane & Abel had me so deeply entwined in the lives and personalities and relationships that I hoped that it would be carried on at the same level with Abel’s daughter. Maybe that’s the hard part of a sequel: living up to the first blockbuster. There was the rivalry with the other senator and the drama of the presidential race, but it lacked the personal histories of the characters and thus lacked some of the tension.

Still, Jeffrey Archer is one of those writers who could write about grass growing and keep your attention. I’m certainly going to follow up with book #3, “Shall We Tell the President?”

Without a vacation coming up soon (The shock! The horror!), I might lose some momentum in getting into the flow of book three, but Archer will draw me in and take me back to his world.