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Tuesday, August 4, 2020

Red Lotus by Chris Bohjalian

This book about a man manufactured stab at a pandemic is strangely tight on point given what we are living through right now, and quite diversionary, in that it is largely a novel of suspense that quickly picks up your interest and carries you through to the end.  I had borrowed it from my mother and before I knew it, it was due in four days.  Oh no!  But not to worry, I finished it in two days and had I had more time on the first day, would have been a one sitting book.  That propulsive.
The story is about a man who is not what he seems and his girlfriend, who slowly dawns to that fact.  The book opens in Vietnam, with Austin going off for a day of biking alone to visit the site where his uncle went missing, and Alexis waiting for his return in their hotel room in Danang.
Austin does not return, the reader knows why, but Alexis does not, and the rest of the book is about her looking for answers as to who and what Austin was all about.  Alexis is nobody's fool.  She is calm at all times, examines things cautiously, and doesn't assume that things are as they seem.  Good pandemic reading.

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