I’m a reader at heart and so I was tickled pink to get an advanced copy of James Patterson new book coming out in September – Cradle and All. Don’t get mixed up with the title…I just searched Amazon and realized he wrote another book with the same title back in 2000.

lg-cradleAndAll-teen-edition

I’m a huge James Patterson fan. I enjoy his style of writing – the fast paced, short chapters, a lot of punch added to each scene but unfortunately I can’t say I loved this book. The book is labeled as YA fiction but that’s never stopped me from enjoying a book before – I’ve read a lot of YA that I’ve loved.

I loved the premise – which is what got me really excited about the storyline.

Two teenagers claim that they’re pregnant.
And virgins.
One is carrying the son of God—
and the other is carrying the son of Satan.
But which is which?

These are the type of books I love and devour. I enjoy the journey authors take on these paths, how they view scripture and life and mix the two into something I would have no trouble believing. I especially love when they delve into the past…and while all of that is mixed into this novel…I was left with the feeling that there was more, that it could have gone deeper and yet the author chose not to. It skimmed the surface of what could have made it so great which made it out to be only okay.

There are four storylines you follow. The two virgins, a priest and nun turned PI. In all but one of the storylines, I wish there had been more. There was a lot of pages allocated to one of the virgins. There could have been so much more to the priest and his timeline with the Vatican and the Pope and the history of prophesies given…I probably would have believed it more if there had been. A very brief romantic thread was woven in with one of the priests and the nun turned PI…but not enough to make it matter. But what I was really disappointed in was the whole pregnant virgins carrying son of God or son of Satan. I wish there had been more to this storyline, that it had gone deeper. The world was in chaos and yet other than it being mentioned in a few sentences, I wouldn’t have even known.

Now, don’t get me wrong…I enjoyed the book enough to stay up late in order to finish it. There is a slight twist at the end that I enjoyed and I can’t wait to see where the next book (I have to believe this was a set up for book 2). I hope it goes deeper, that the readers journey will be more at the forefront than it was for this book.

Bottom line, I didn’t walk away believing this was something that could happen today and normally I love that aspect about books like this…it all seems plausible. Not with this book though, unfortunately.