THE WALLS CAME TUMBLING DOWN
Babs H. Deal

Synopsis: Seven women, all good friends, But in a few anxious days their friendships, values and loyalties were to be challenged as never before. For when the walls of their old sorority house came down, the skeleton of a baby was exposed in the rubble.

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July 03, 2008

"Maybe when any magic starts some other magic somewhere was to die. Clap your hands, everybody, and save Tinker Bell. Dear Lord, I'm crying." - Part One, pg 80

Review: I have never read anything by Babs H. Deal before, but then again, her books are hard to come by these days. After lucking upon this book at Goodwill, I figured I'd give it a shot. The Walls Came Tumbling Down isn't the type of book that I would generally read. Reading the synopsis it seemed like something that was based off of a Lifetime movie, and given that generalization, I couldn't possibly take it seriously. When I finished the book I found out about the movie version of her novel called Friendship, Secrets, and Lies (1979). The devil inside me couldn't help but laugh.

Babs H. Deal's writing style isn't overly descriptive or even blatant in southern affectations, yet I got a good sense of the American South, which I quite liked. I did enjoy reading the reflections of each of the characters. The differing points of view were what kept me interested in the book. However, with so many characters, it became far too confusing to keep straight. From the start I continually had to keep flipping back and forth between pages just to remember who was who. Even though I was grateful that the past and present were easily distinguishable by the italicized lettering, some of the transitions still left me a bit confused. Sometimes it took me awhile to figure out whether I was in the past or present and which character was the lead at that point.

Although this book is categorized as a mystery, it did not seem like one. The book read like several different short stories and not even one of them seemed really connected to the storyline. The "mystery" part was thrown in at the end, as if Deal suddenly remembered the plot of the book and had to come back to what she had first started.

I think the only major problem for me is that The Walls Came Tumbling Down doesn't live up to the mystery books of today...Actually, now that I really think about it, The Boxcar Children book series had better mysteries than this one.

NAVIGATION

CHALLENGES

BIBLIOPHILE