6 Ripley Avenue

by Noelle Holten

[Jeff Sexton]

A Lot Going On. This is one of those books that has a lot of extra plot stuff going on outside of the central mystery. There is a decent examination of what happens when a halfway house opens up in your neighborhood, there are various guards/ cops doing various naughty things, there is the friendship between a reporter and an activist - an activist who happened to get a job inside the house. In other words, enough side stuff to maybe justify the 400 page length of the novel... but the side stuff tends to detract from and/ or muddle the central mystery. So if you're a reader who prefers a more "clean cut" tale with fewer side jaunts interwoven... I can see where you might rate this tale lower on a subjective scale (and let's face it, despite my *attempts* at some level of objectivity, *all* reviews are *entirely* subjective). For my own attempting-to-be-as-objective-as-possible purposes, there wasn't really anything here truly *wrong* to hang a star deduction on, and thus it gets the full five stars. With its quick chapters and multiple perspectives, this is actually a book that seemingly "reads" shorter than its actual length would indicate, and the rather novel concepts here combine with this storytelling style to make this tale one that can easily be read in small chunks - which turns even a book of this length into a potential vacation/ beach read. Very much recommended.