Lily is my first book by this author. I found it well-written and terribly interesting. Lily Quinn isn't your typical twenty-four-year-old airhead and college dropout. No. She's much more than that. She's a study in contradictions—as is this book about her life. This story (which is almost 600 pages long) of Lily's life lingers much too long on Lily's dysfunctional family and her battle with cancer when it's really about a missing roommate, Amy—who Lily loved but never really knew, her relationship with the detective, Spencer, sent to investigate the case, and her brother, Andrew's involvement. This really seemed like two stories in one book. Her editor could have been more involved and cut about a hundred pages. And yet, I read the entire thing and was glad I hung in there. The ending was delicious when I realized what was about to happen to the nasty sister, Anne. ( )

Weighing in at hefty 608 pages, The Girl in Times Square by Paullina Simons is a lengthy, occasionally meandering novel, that begins as a mystery then turns into a family drama and toward the end, a romance. A solid read, but some readers might lose patience with the time it takes to resolve the multiple story arcs.

At twenty-four, Lily Quinn is broke and struggling to complete her degree when her roommate, Amy McFadden, goes missing. Lily is bit aimless and drifting, easy to manipulate and a somewhat fanciful young woman who is often her own worst enemy as she ignores problems instead of dealing with them. She is also amazingly unhelpful when missing persons Detective Spencer O'Malley questions her about Amy after she is reported missing by her mother. Lily is not an easy character to like or empathize with as she faces some very daunting issues that extend behind her missing roommate.

Spencer O'Malley is a crack detective whose personal life is full of tragedy. He is closemouthed about his private life but very dedicated to his career. Despite spending his days immersed in the darker side of life, Spencer is kind, caring and compassionate. He has a pretty good idea what happened to Amy and he also has a viable suspect to investigate. But he is in for an uphill battle to find out the truth as he quickly discovers that Lily's answers are vague and without much substance and his prime suspect uses his position to try to ruin O'Malley's career.

Lily's family is dysfunctional and every member is somewhat self-absorbed. Her mother is a raging alcoholic and her father is the worst type of enabler who is miserable in his marriage yet he cannot bring himself to walk away. Her sisters are selfish and completely disinterested in Lily's life until they stand to gain something from her. Lily is close to her much older brother Andrew, but as she comes to discover, he is not the man she thinks he is. Lily's grandma is the best of the lot but even she has a few idiosyncrasies and quirks.

Although it takes a while to hit its stride, The Girl in Times Square is an interesting novel but is does suffer a bit of an identity crisis due to the numerous story arcs and multiple genres. The mystery surrounding Amy's disappearance is the most compelling part of the novel, but for a good portion of the story, it takes a backseat to the unfolding drama with Lily and her broken family. Despite his flaws (and maybe because of them?) Spencer is the most likable and realistic character in the book. With unexpected twists, shocking turns and a bit of melodrama, Paullina Simons wraps up the novel's various storylines and brings the novel to a decent conclusion. However, there are a few threads left dangling since the fate of one of the characters remains unknown.
( )

Have you ever been at a restaurant where the waitress reads off a special, and you think to yourself, "Wow! Most of those ingredients sound really good; but they don't all go together and it's just too much." So I don't want the special, but I have to admire the creativity and ambition of the chef. That's how I felt about this book.

[Warning! Slight spoilers ahead] So let's talk about the ingredients of this book:

- A missing girl
- A girl developing a career as an artist
- A May/December romance
- Cancer
- A multi-million dollar lottery win
- Alcoholism
- A cop being investigated by Internal Affairs
- A toxic mother/daughter relationship
- A family secret involving infidelity
- Another family secret involving another infidelity
- A family secret involving Nazis
- Weird religious cults
- Political fanaticism
- Hallucinogenic drugs
- A weenie roast involving a dude's actual weenie (I think that scene scarred me for life)

...and, if the narrative went on for 5 minutes longer:

- The 9/11 attacks in NYC.

There are probably a bunch of other things I forgot. So there was a lot going on here. And yet, there were large stretches of time when I was kind of bored. I am on record as being anti-trilogy but there was definitely enough material here for at least a trilogy, and it still would have seemed like a ridiculous amount of drama to happen to one person.

I really don't know how to rate this crazy thing. I didn't love it, I didn't hate it. I don't think it was a great success but kind of a spectacular near miss.

A note on the audio book: The woman who narrated did a really good job, giving all of the characters a unique voice etc. And her voice wasn't overtly annoying. So it feels unfair to say so, but for some reason, I found her performance to be detrimental to my enjoyment of the book - especially towards the end. ( )

I found this book to be completely overwhelming. It was a good story that definitely held my interest and I wanted to read it through. But that being said, I felt like there were too many storylines happening within the story. I often got confused trying to track and follow the different characters and stories. ( )

*I received a copy of this book through LibraryThing Early Reviewers.*

I wanted to read this book mostly because I'm a fan of the author's Bronze Horseman series. This book is very different, although I do think the author has a tendency to tell long, complicated tales. The book opens with a missing young woman and an attraction between her roommate and the investigating police officer. The story quickly gets complicated - with an affair with a congressman, an almost certainly fatal cancer diagnosis, a winning lottery ticket, alcoholism, and family secrets going back decades. It's a fun read, once I got into it, but after all the twists and turns, I do wonder if this book could have been considerably shorter. ( )