Gerald M. O'Connor

I just finished reading [b:The Origins of Benjamin Hackett|33136226|The Origins of Benjamin Hackett|Gerald M. O'Connor|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1480252490s/33136226.jpg|53815204] and for such a short book it took me a surprisingly long time to read (almost 4 days!). I just couldn't fully immerse myself into this novel and I found my mind was continuously wandering while I was reading this book so I'd have to go back and reread multiple parts because I just wasn't retaining it the first time which doesn't make for an enjoyable reading experience. I like to be completely captivated by, and fully engaged in, the novels that I read and this one just didn't do it for me, it was almost painfully boring in some parts and so unbelievable and unrealistic in others that it was a struggle for me to finish.

I have to admit that I went into reading this book completely blind with no expectations because I have never heard of this book previously, nor have I ever read any other works by its author, Gerald M. O'Connor, so at least I wasn't incredibly disappointed as far as that goes. The book begins with a young man, Benjamin Hackett, turning 18 years old and finding out, from the couple who he has always thought of as his parents, that he was, in fact, adopted. Let's just say that he doesn't take the news well and has no details about his biological parents so, along with the help of his best mate "JJ", he embarks on a mission to discover the history of his origins (hence the title) with every intention of greeting his biological parents with a punch in the face. The book follows Benjamin in this quest, a coming of age story, if you will but I found a lot of the scenarios he and JJ find themselves in, and some of the characters they encounter along the way, to be completely far fetched and unrealistic to the point where it was almost insulting to the intelligence of the reader and I couldn't take the book seriously as a result.

This book takes place in Ireland, mainly in the city of Cork, and much of the language throughout the novel reflects that, which I actually enjoyed very much. I've always been a big fan of reading British books and picking up on words or phrases they use that differ from those of Americans and this book had several examples of just that, including: the use of "tinnies" which refers to cans of beer, "box" meaning a television, "torch" for flashlight, and "holdall" was the word used to describe a backpack. Luckily I read this book on my Kindle so whenever one of these questionable words was used I was able to look up the definition immediately, a tool I utilized quite a few times while reading this book.

Having said that I have to be honest in that this was definitely not one of my favorites to say the least and with so many excellent books out there waiting to be read I'm quite disappointed that I wasted my time on this not-so-good one and I can't, in good faith, recommend this to anyone else. I'm giving it three stars because it wasn't horrible, the writing wasn't bad but the storyline was just so unbelievable and the characters were really unremarkable and they didn't leave an impression on me one way or the other. If I had to use one word to describe my feelings towards [b:The Origins of Benjamin Hackett|33136226|The Origins of Benjamin Hackett|Gerald M. O'Connor|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1480252490s/33136226.jpg|53815204] it would be "indifferent".

I received an advanced reading copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.… (plus d'informations)