This book was confusing and had no direction. Characters that should have been the focus were oddly left in the shadows. Some of the characters were interesting and I would have liked to have seen further development. Lacked focus is the best description I can come up with. After reading it, I was left wondering how it ended up on the Amazon "Best" list.

Poorly written, characters were never developed, too many characters introduced that had no significance to the story, no clear story plot, the parents died but that is never really addressed, we know the dad was involved in something bad, but what, we never find out. I would have never finished this book if it wasn't a book club read. It deserves 1/2 of a star because it's written material, but that's the only reason! Awful book!

I did not enjoy this book at all. The characters were not well developed at all and the book was confusing. I really didn\\\'t care what happened to the characters. I\\\'m not quite sure why I finished it. I guess I kept waiting for it to get better; unfortunately it never did.

I find myself in a pattern of reading stories that skip around so much I feel I must precede each book with a dose of Dramamine. Perhaps I have somehow fallen out of sync in the rhythm of reading? Or have writers started putting a story on paper, tossing the pile in the air and then putting it together in the order that they pick up the fallen papers?

This book had the backbone of a decent story, a good mystery, and a lot of sex (if that's what you're looking for in a book). A young boy's parents are gunned down before his eyes - that is Chapter 1. It stands to reason that when Chapter 2 starts and it is a conversation with him and his Dad that we have now advanced back in time (pre-murder). But the story kept moving to and fro that I got dizzy at times. Somewhere tangled amid the pages WAS a story of a murder, a cover-up, millions of dollars made and millions lost, the coming of age of an 8-foot tall football player, the downfall of a world class ballerina and a lesson in how to cook meatless dishes.

I gave the book three stars because the mystery was a decent one and did finally come full circle but the journey along the way was hard for me to follow and left much unanswered. Life Among Giants had a vague resemblance to a carnival freak show -- where you pay your money thinking you are going to see the world's largest man and in the end you feel like you've been fooled by mirrors and illusion. The story and writing still just fell "short" for me.