this was ok, but nothing great. some of the characters were really interesting, even sam, the protagonist somewhat (which i find is often not the case with first person narrators). however, i thought there were just too many characters and the mystery within a mystery thing wasn't too well done. the british setting of sam's novel was not believable at all (especially the bad british accents in the audio book) and the solution wasn't too great i thought. also, i would somehow have wished that the two stories intertwined more, although i cannot pinpoint how that might have been done in a satisfying way. i don't know if i'll go on reading this series