Book Review: Be Careful What You Wish For

Be Careful What You Wish For is book four of Jeffrey Archer's intriguing, suspenseful series, "The Clifton Chronicles." As far as I know, I am only awaiting the fifth and final installment. It will be a hard wait, as this book also ended with quite the cliff-hanger, Jeffrey Archer's trademark. Once again, I decided to enjoy the audio version and relished the opportunity to take in the story with the British and Irish accents (although, I still believe the chosen narrator does a lousy job with the American accents - see my review of the previous installment).

While the second and third installments suffered from the typical troubles of series fiction (not living up to the awesomeness of the first book in the series and tending to have too much fluff and filling just to drag the story on more), I don't believe that is true of this fourth book.  I think this installment was every bit as good as the introductory book and didn't seem to be filled with pointless rambling or unnecessary additional characters. It offered phenomenal storytelling and incredible edge-of-the-seat suspense.

Opening with the resolution to the cliff-hanger from the previous book (did their son or their son's friend die in the fatal crash on the A-1?), Archer propels us further into the exploits and evil machinations of the merciless villain, Don Pedro Martinez. Don Pedro's animosity for the Clifton and Barrington families is unbounded. He will not stop until he has destroyed them entirely. The question is: will he destroy them entirely or will they prevail in the end?

While the story encompasses numerous characters, each one has a part to play and propels the story along. The suspense in this tale was absolutely riveting. Moreover, the ending left me with no doubt that I will pick up the fifth installment to settle the question of whether or not the newest ship of the Barrington Shipping Company, the MV Buckingham, meets its demise or not. I only hope I will not have to wait long. This book only recently came out, so I could be waiting a full year before I get to hear the conclusion to this nail-biting tale. Still, this is a series I would happily read all over again once the final book is released.