Four Crows

by Andrea Peters

SUPERANNO Five strangers agree to go on the adventure of their lives in exchange for the fulfillment of their dreams. Too late, they find themselves pawns in an unknown foreign land, caught between rivals in a deadly game of political maneuvering. As their lives unravel, the meaning of the four crows and the machinations of their tormentor become apparent. Simultaneous.

292 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2004

Reviews

[Erin Lavoie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my first "couldn't put it down" book 10 years ago. I reread it again recently and it was just as good as I remember!

[Anne (Booklady) Molinarolo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ralph Gabriel dreams of a house for his family. Student, Sarah Connell really wants to go law school, while Kristen Conrad wants to study in Paris to further her art. Entrepreneur Andrew Lee was success and 15 minutes of fame. John just wants the money and leave the horrid game. But the rules of the newest reality show, Dream Maker, state that the contestants must complete all of the tasks together or fail together. If they survive the week in an unknown country, Mr. Bennett will grant all of their wishes. If the 5 fail, their lives as they know will lay in ashes. They must complete each task without any outside help of electronics. But the Dream Maker show isn’t what it seems. Mr. Bennett has pernicious intent and if the contestants want to survive, they must figure out the game and what the FOUR CROWS Emblem really means.

Andrea Peters answers what the 5 individuals will do to win Bennett’s game. But will their actions fulfill their dreams? And in this day and age where Reality TV Rules many cable channels, I believe the book is timely. Peters builds psychological suspense upon suspense from the beginning to the unsettling ending. I wasn’t prepared to like this book because it took me a few chapters to get into the storyline; I am not a fan of Reality TV. Yet I did like the book and vacillated between liking the characters. And I cared what happened to them, even if their behavior shocked me. Shocked as Peters probably wanted me to be given what happened to each of them. What would I do if I could make a dream of mine come true? Run as fast as my bum legs would let me.

[Denise みか Hutchins · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had a lot of problems with this book. It was, first of all, riddled with typos and formatting errors. The errors were annoying and several times caused me real confusion because I could not understand what was written. Second, I was misled by the author bio on the back jacket flap and frustrated when I found the story to be neither "character driven" nor "carefully researched". None of the characters were interesting or real, none of them went through any significant change or transformation. They were all cookie-cutter predictable and remained that way for the entirety of the story. And as for "carefully researched", there were far too many clichés and stereotypes for that to be wholly true. SOME areas may have been carefully researched but at best, it simply showed which parts the author personally found interesting, and at worst it revealed the book to be weak and unbalanced. Perhaps that's the explanation behind why the author put in so much detail about flying--the author bio stated he flies as a hobby--but for me, the reader, I only found it tiresome and unnecessary.

All that being said, I DID enjoy the book more often than not. I was especially excited by the last half, though maybe that's the point at which I got used to the formatting problems and let go of my hopes for character development. I think the backbone of the plot is very strong and interesting, it just needs a good editor to properly flesh it out.