What I’m Reading: Badlands

I just finished up listening to the audio book Badlands by C. J. Box.

I liked the book. There were a couple things that I didn’t love though. In the end a child is put in danger to get the bad guy. In real life that would have never happened. Also the book is completely set up to have a sequel. Two mysteries are presented but only one is solved. The other is left hanging and will (I presume) be solved in the next book. I wish I would have known that from the beginning because I kept asking myself..well what about that other part of the book. All in all not a bad book…I’ll likely pick up the next book once it’s out.

Here’s what Amazon had to say, “Twelve-year-old Kyle Westergaard dreams of getting out of Grimstad and leading a better life. Even though Kyle has been written off as a “slow” kid, he has dreams deeper than anyone can imagine. One day, while delivering newspapers, he witnesses a car accident and takes a mysterious bundle from the scene. Suddenly he’s in possession of a lot of money―and packets of white powder―and Kyle can’t help but wonder whether his luck has changed…for better or for worse.

When the temperature drops to 30 below and a gang war heats up, it’s up to Cassie to help restore law and order. But is she in over her head? As she is propelled on a collision course with a murderous enemy, she finds that the key to it all might come in the most unlikely form: a boy on a bike named Kyle. He keeps showing up where he doesn’t belong. And he seems to know something that Cassie does not about what lies beneath the surface of this small and troubled town… “

Amazon readers give the book 4.4 stars. I think I’ll give it a 4. I just wasn’t quite happy that the book couldn’t stand alone if the reader wished it to.