Wednesday, December 12, 2012

20% Rule: The Family Business by Carl Weber with Eric Pete

Genre: Urban Literature
Series/Standalone:  Series
Version: Hardcover (ISBN: 9781601624673)
Publication Date: February 2012
Publisher: Urban Books, LLC
Source:  Library

Synopsis (GoodReads):
By day, the Duncans are an upstanding family who run a thriving car dealership in Queens. By night, they live a dangerous secret life! Carl Weber and Eric Pete deliver a thrilling underworld drama in The Family Business.L.C. Duncan, patriarch of the family, is at the age when he’s starting to think about retirement in sunny Florida. But the recession is taking a bite out of the business and, worrying more, he has to decide which of his children should take over. When his workaholic son Orlando gets the nod, Orlando’s siblings—including the favorite son Vegas, conniving daughter London, glamorous party girl Paris and flamboyant nightclub owner Rio—are up in arms. But so are the Zunigas, a rival family whose fragile business alliance with the Duncans may explode at any moment.When Vegas suddenly breaks away from the family, London’s lawyer husband, Harris, makes a play for the company and all hell breaks loose. Selling cars, it turns out, is only a small part of the Duncans’ family business. Each member of the family has a secret expertise to reveal. And now, under siege from the Mafia, Mexican drug cartels and the Zunigas, the Duncans will have to stick together—or die separately!
Why I Quit:

The Family Business and I started off on the wrong foot and it just went down hill from there.  The first chapter introduces you to the youngest member of the Duncan Family, Paris.  And she was annoying  as a toddler throwing a fit in the middle of Walmart.  Really, she was just one huge giant ghetto stereotype.  Then Weber and Pete introduces you to the other members of the family and while they are not as bad as her.  They are uninteresting and really hard to connect to.  By the time I got to Chapter 3, which I believe was narrated by London (the oldest sister), I knew that I would not care what happened to anyone in the story.

One of the things that sometimes saves books from bad characters is good writing.  The only word that I can think of to describe the writing style in this book is basic.  The sentence structure had no depth and there was no style.  Nothing to keep me wanting to turn the page.  Combine that with the fact that Pete and Weber decided to write in the first person point of view, and it was a complete fail.

This is not my first time reading Carl Weber (but I stopped a long time ago) and Eric Pete is new to me.  I don't think I will be reading anything but either of them any time soon.

Completed:  21% (79 out of 370)

2 comments:

  1. Pity to hear it's not great, the premise sounds pretty good. Not sure of about all the children being named after cities, though, even if it fits the stereotype of money.

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  2. Oh not the stereotypes. I hate that! That is a sign of lack of thoughtful creativity on the writers part. Thanks for the warning! :)

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