Review of Final Notice

[TheDinosaurLawyer]

[Following is an OnlineBookClub.org ARA Review of the book, Final Notice.]

---

3 out of 5 stars

---

Share This Review

---

Final Notice - 3 out of 5 stars.

Summary - a senior citizen, Vince and his wife Trudi have a lot of conversations with friends and Vince thinks about buying a gun for protection. The author tells a series of tangential stories, almost like a newspaper reporting on gun violence around the country, throws in a bit about global warming, and then circles back to the premise of what people would do if they knew the exact day they would die. A tangential story involves the presumed premise of the novel - Vijay's testing of the final notice watch and some of Vijay's interactions with other people.


The book has an interesting premise, but how the watch works - how it can be infallibly trusted isn't explained. I would have a hard time believing a piece of wearable tech would accurately predict my death without a lot of buildup as to why it works. So there is a bit of a premise problem. Also, it seems there is a link between the final notice and guns - nothing else.


The book is well edited. Few typos and grammar mistakes, but the book doesn't really suck the reader into the moment. The characters don't have unique or believable voices. At one point, Vince tells his wife Trudi, "I'll say. They're nothing short of laudable Americans and their kids, wow! Talk about success stories!" Each character sounds like the author's voice and no character really pops out.


Final Notice does not seem well researched, it espouses political talking points. If you are anti-gun, you might enjoy it, certainly more than someone who is agnostic about guns or is pro gun. One example of poor research, there is a Senior Discount by the NRA for guns as a repeated part of the book - but the NRA doesn't sell guns or subsidize the sale of guns. It is an advocacy group. For the author to have such a huge mistake, repeated several times, undercuts author credibility.


I was able to finish this book, it was rather clean writing, so it deserves more than 1-2 stars on those metrics. The book does not deserve 4 or 5 stars because I couldn't really recommend it to anyone but those looking for anti-gun anecdotes.