A Caller's Game

Short summary:  Jordan Briggs, the shock talk radio host of Overdrive with Jordan Briggs, is a woman who’s built her show at the expense of others’ dignity and doesn’t have a problem with that.  When a tragic stunt she pulled in the past on her show comes back to haunt her in the form of a mysterious male caller, “Bernie”,  who wants to play an increasingly dangerous game on the air with her, she finds out just how much her actions could cost her.  What follows is complete chaos, as she, her show producer Billy,  NY detective Cole Hundley and a whole slew of other characters race against time to stop the deadly game.

J.D. Barker in his author’s note says that he’s often accused of writing literary popcorn and that he’s OK with that.  His intention is to entertain, not to be profound or represent some moral or political cause.  I appreciate that honesty.  He knows the audience he wants and he writes for it.

That being said:  I’m not his audience.  At least not for this kind of book.

Don’t get me wrong - I actually do enjoy the occasional action thriller movie, and Die Hard ranks up there with some of my favorite movies, so I appreciate some of the similarities to this book.  It’s hard-core, all-in, over-the-top, make-your-senses-bleed action.  The problem is it’s exhausting.  At about 70 percent in, I was looking for someone to stop the ride and let me off, knowing that things were only going to get even more intense to the finish line.  I could have dealt with that, but in order to stay invested, you have to actually LIKE the characters.  With the exception of Cole, there wasn’t any character I felt particularly sympathetic towards.

Jordan is next level unlikeable.  She’s selfish, narcissistic, greedily ambitious, aloof, sarcastic and just generally unpleasant.   Her mini-me daughter, Charlotte, who’s 11, is the most obnoxious, precocious, snarky, thinks-she’s-smarter-than-every-adult child I’ve ever encountered in a book, and I HATE feeling that way or talking that way about a child, especially if I’m required by the story to feel sympathy towards her predicament.  Bernie is apparently omniscient, because despite the author’s explanation for how he sees, hears and knows everything everyone everywhere is doing, it’s so beyond human possibility that I’d have to bury my brain in the basement under 10 layers of concrete to believe it.

I know authors often use unlikeable characters to illustrate a redemptive “bad to good” arc.  That didn’t work for me in this book.  I didn’t end the book feeling warm and fuzzy toward Jordan, and maybe Barker wasn’t even going for that.  Because there was no one to root for, except for maybe Cole, the ending felt empty and unsatisfying.  I didn’t hate the book … it kept me invested in the way a fluff action movie would -  it just didn’t win my heart.  I would absolutely read other books by J. D. Barker - just not the action ones.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

★★★ ½   (rounded down to 3)