Do You Solemnly Swear is an enigma to review. At its core the book was presented almost to me as a piece of nonfiction. There was a LOT of background information. Dates, facts, illustrious college degrees and places were stated matter-of-factly. In fact, there was so much seemingly superfluous and unimportant information that it got in the way of the story. Everything seemed too perfect. Everyone was connected too closely to everyone else. There was way too much serendipity here!
Everyone was rich, well to do, except for Annie and Sam – coincidentally the villains of the story. Should that tell us something? The majority of us don’t live like the main characters in this book. We don’t have Swiss vacation homes. We don’t have masters and doctorate degrees. We can’t afford to hire contractors to build miniature guest houses in the backyard that exactly mimic our real houses. We can’t spend our own money to construct state-of-the art medical facilities in a prison.
Who are these people in this story? Just a bunch of rich snobs who have nothing better to do than feel sorry for the less fortunate? Does the author have a special access pass to the top crust of the social elite in this country and we are just observers to reality, along for the ride?
The book also has a perfect bow-tie ending. Meh, I like strife, conflict, pain and suffering in my books to make them interesting. If everything goes as planned so perfectly, what’s to interest the listener? The ending was way too telegraphed. This happily-ever-after ending was too saccharine.
I don’t know. There’s probably a name for this type of book – where a fiction title is written as if it’s a nonfiction title, full of background information on people, places, things that happened in the past. There’s no character development, just their past backgrounds, achievements, but not real…. people. They are like props just to move the story along. Could it be labeled an… airport paperback?
The narration by Mark Kamish was almost flawless, marred by lots of hissing and rustling during recording. It’s almost as if he wore noisy clothing during the recording session and every little movement was being picked up. I’ve listened to other titles from Mark, and didn’t hear these types of artifacts, so I was a bit surprised to encounter these.
Towards the end I was really just waiting for it to finish. I already knew what was going to happen. I was just waiting to see how the author implemented it. The trial didn’t even occur until the last hour or so of the story, and wrapped up way too quickly, like it was an afterthought.
This audiobook was gifted to me by the narrator in exchange for an unbiased review.