A Lifetime to Die

This one was just okay for me. Strong writing and a very likeable character in the person of Aristotle (Telly) Mercury made the first two parts of the book really good. In my opinion, something went terribly amiss with the remainder of the story. The pieces stopped fitting, and I came dangerously close to losing interest. The business with Christina seemed random. Disappointing after such a strong start. <br /><br />This was a first-reads giveaway, thank you.

I received this book through the Goodreads first reads giveaway program. I liked this novel and would recommend. It was well written with a likeable main character. I enjoyed how the book was broken up into parts. I didn't rate it any higher because I felt the author lost me with whole Christina/Mercury relationship. It felt forced, unnecessary to the effectiveness of plot and felt very much disconnected from the whole feel of the book. Part 1 &amp; 2 were very strong, very much a 5 star rating but then the story and coziness of the book fell apart for me. Nonetheless, a 3 star rating.

I won <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/20488434.A_Lifetime_to_Die" title="A Lifetime to Die by P.S. Meronek" rel="noopener">A Lifetime to Die</a> as a goodreads first-read giveaway.<br /><br />I thought it was ridiculous. It took me a lifetime, or so it seemed, to read this far-fetched, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink, so-called thriller. The author pulls out every cliche in the book (pun intended) to spin this unbelievable yarn of a guy who flees Czechoslovakia before his uncle can kill him or the invading Russians can get him, makes his way to the United States, and in the space of 24 years or so, goes from an immigrant carpenter to one of the largest developers in New York, if not the Free World, if not the Entire Universe. Along the way he brushes shoulders with the likes of junk-bond magnate Michael Milken and hotelier turned criminal Leora Helmsely. Aristotle "Telly" Mercury claims to be an honest businessman, of modest aspirations, but the opposite is true. He is driven by the desire to avenge his father's death and gain control of the homeland country manufacturing business turned multinational conglomerate that his rightfully his.<br /><br />IF you like formulaic claptrap that piles on one unbelievable adventure/venture on top of the other, if you like bad writing, if you find this sort of high-horse nonsense enjoyable, by all means, run off to your nearest bookstore. Otherwise, save your money and buy toilet paper, because you will get more value out of the latter.

<i>Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book in a Goodread's Giveaway.</i><br /><br />Well. That's over. <br /><br />I liked this book in the beginning. I really did. In fact, almost the whole first segment had me turning pages and sucked into Aristotle's life. The writing was good, which is pretty much all that's kept my rating up where it is. While I may not have liked the story, I can't say the author doesn't have a decent handle on prose. <br /><br />The problem with this book was the plot which went from the pretty basic 'Uncle cheated us out of money' to ... the end. I don't know what happened. Honestly. I feel like I got tempted into reading with a piece of candy then hit over the head with a cinder block. I'm not usually one to be so harsh about a book, but I'm honestly in disbelief at this point. I just keep asking "What happened?!"<br /><br /><i>A Lifetime to Die</i> would fit into the Drama category, in my opinion. It was faintly reminiscent of a story like <i>The Great Gatsby</i>, although it lacked any clear hook to tether the reader to everything that was going on. [Warning, I might start dropping spoilers here soon, so if you haven't read it and want to, maybe stop here.] When you start this story, you sort of map out the basic elements: Uncle stole factory, hidden documents, murder attempt, mob, escape from the country. Then we get to America, and things start taking a new turn. Telly starts working construction, trying to earn money. Gradually he has a friend who dares him to go bigger and shoot for new dreams. Telly rises through the ranks and starts to make something of himself. Meanwhile, as a reader you're just hanging in there, waiting. What happened to the Uncle? What happened to Prague? Reassurance comes that this will be down the road. Telly is saving, building relationships so he can take on said Uncle. Then he falls in love. Then there is a casino and someone tries to kill him. <br /><br />Life falls apart. Telly falls in love again, and I kept waiting for some sort of epiphany. Maybe he's working too hard, and should just settle down and enjoy life? Maybe he needs to head home and resolve things? But Aristotle just keeps reaching higher and higher, still following the ghosts of his past. Time starts slow, then gets faster the more we read. Five years go past. Then six. Then ten. We read through all the small details of his arrival in America then his cousin comes in and I have no idea who she is or why she is important. The biggest 'reveal' doesn't happen until the end of the book, and I honestly don't know what it had to do with the rest of the story. <br /><br />Are you confused? I feel confused. <br /><br />The problem with <i>A Lifetime to Die</i> was it tried to do too much. Just like the back cover, everything was crammed into this novel and started to gush out the seams. There were points where I thought it would get better, but somehow things just didn't click. Why was it necessary to have so many conversation about profits and legalities and building the empire? Why didn't we get to know the people in his life the way we did Mrs. Schroeder? Time jumps so unexpectedly, I never know if the next chapter is the next day, or five years. This book left me grasping for straws, holding pages that felt ripped out of order while other segments seemed missing entirely. <br /><br />I felt like there were messages woven into the book. They needed more polishing to make them clearer, however. This book, as I understood it, was about spending a lifetime rushing forward, chasing something, only to find you turn around, and the moment is over. Years become moments, gone. It's the curse of youth to never look back until it's too late. However prominent that message could have been, it was lost in the mess for me. There was nothing to carry the story from point A to point B, so I just ended up sitting somewhere between the two, wondering what happened.

I received this book through a Goodreads giveaway. Thank you for the book!<br /><br />I have mixed feelings on this book? I liked parts of it, but other portions not so much. I didn't feel like I really knew any of the characters very well except for the main character, Telly. There were also times I would get frustrated with the minute details that just seemed to drag on and on but not really add to the story. I never really felt that I just wanted to give up on reading it, because the story line was interesting enough for me to stay involved. That being said, I did enjoy the book as a whole although the ending felt a little lackluster.

Like to thank the author for selecting me as a winner of this book, I went out on a limb and registered for it, I read the summary on the book and thought it might just be a good book to read, thanks for giving me a chance to read the genres of Drama, Thriller and Suspense. <br /><br />Aristotle Mercury's family has secrets. He and his Mother have lived a poor and hard life, his Mother working for her brother-in-law, Aristole ending up taking a job in construction, working for his Uncle also. What happens when his Mother has a accident in the company, what does Aristotle learn while working for his Uncle and what really happened to his father. <br />Aristotle comes to America, as a young man. Finds a place to live with a widow, Mrs. Schroeder, she tells him he has talent and has a proposition for him and her to become partners. He makes it big in New York, finds a wife, has a daughter, then his life is turned upside down. <br />Aristotle has always wanted revenge on his Uncle, will he get his revenge or will another family secret destroy him. <br /><br />The flow of this book has you wanting to read more to find out what Aristotle is going to have to face next in his life. Read of his despair, love, revenge and the one shocking secret. It is a great read and I really enjoyed reading this book, generally not big on drama stories, but I found this one a book worth taking time to read.

I received this book as part of Goodreads First Reads program. <br /><br />When I began reading this book, I had a four star rating in mind. At the halfway point, it had dropped to a three star. When I got to the last few pages, I was exasperated to the point of a one star rating. <br /><br />Initially, the blurb on the back had me very interested but while reading, some things simply didn't align. As the story wore on, the plot continued to just fall apart until it was almost nonexistent. This book has every cliche under the sun (I am fully aware of what I just wrote). It's almost like the author googled a list and stuck them in as often as possible, regardless of plot. <br /><br />In the beginning, the main character Telly is a young man who eventually discovers his family has been betrayed by his uncle. After fleeing Czechoslovakia, he winds up in America and becomes very rich in a few short years. <br /><br />*SPOILERS*<br /><br />There are several things in this book that make no sense. <br />-Telly's mother needs her arm removed after an infection and then the chapter ends and the mother randomly disappears. The author doesn't mention that the mother died until several chapters later and several months have elapsed in Telly's life. She is the only family left in the main character's life and the author can't be bothered to mention the fact that she's dead? <br />-Time lapses were very strange. One minute, the sun is just setting and then half a page later it's 10 o'clock at night even though the characters have uttered maybe 6 lines of dialogue and there is no other mention of time passing. Sometimes, a chapter would end and the next one had jumped ahead 7 years leaving the last plot unresolved and not really introducing a new, important one. Then the book would go back and fill in the time gap and jump forward again without warning. It was difficult to follow.<br />-Several things were given unnecessarily redundant detail like the pungent odor garlic and pickles make, and yet Telly's wedding to his first love and birth of his first child are condensed into two short paragraphs at the end of a chapter. <br />-Telly comes to America, happens to have a smart landlady interested in business, who had never previously shown an interest, and they become billionaires in a matter of years. Telly is in his early 20s at this point. I understand the American Dream concept, but in his homeland he was a poor boy with little education and little ambition but arrive in America and he's now suddenly an extremely intelligent savvy businessman who builds his own empire from the ground up in less than three years to the point where he becomes internationally famous? <br />-Sometimes the author just didn't pay attention to his own writing. One minute, a character is collapsing onto a double bed and in the next paragraph, that bed is now magically queen sized. <br /><br /><br />There are other things that I simply found tasteless about the book. All three of Telly's love interests are vapid, dumb characters void of any personality. There is no distinction between the three other than one is a much younger cousin-turned lover-turned baby mama-turned half-sister who dies without a given reason. Midway through, Telly's wife and business partners are killed off for seemingly no reason. Telly does not grow from the experience and the plot is not furthered by it other than that Telly now has the opportunity to have some creepy relationships with other women. For that matter, Telly is a very static character. He does not change. I found no difference in him from the sixteen year old in Prague to the 50 year old in New York. He is rather easy to dislike; he yells at everyone and then says he's sorry afterward but always yells at the next instance. One minute, Telly is begging Christina to be the love of his life and then the reader finds out he's got an even younger woman back home who is pregnant with his child, which he marries as soon as Christina has died. <br /><br /><br />The plot overall, is never really resolved. It feels like the author realized he was nearing the end of his novel, realized how boring it had become and decided to throw in several irrelevant plot twists about abortion, a character death, rape, and another cheesy relationship. <br /><br />*END SPOILERS*<br /><br />I very much struggled to finish this book and now wish I had not. I probably would have liked it better.

Fantastic Book!!! I did not want it to end. The character<br />Whether good or evil are extremely believable. The plot<br />is more than an immigrant making good, There are a lot <br />of realistic twist and turns pulling the reader right into<br />the story. You feel what the characters feel especially the<br />main character, Aristotle Mercury.<br />Aristotle’s father possessed to much information so his<br />brother’s associates had to have him removed. They fake<br />his death and send him to a Prague Institute for the <br />Criminally Insane. Then with the Russian mobs backing, <br />Uncle Jacob in able to secure the factory hisbrother Wasily<br />built. But was that the only secret Uncle Jacob was tying<br />to bury???<br />The Red Army is coming into Prague. The year is 1968. <br />When Aristotle learns of his father fate, a rescue is set into<br />place to occur during the confusion. In a bold daring rescue, <br />he rescues his father who is barely alive but lives long enough<br />to show Aristotle where the evidence is located that will<br />prove his father owned the now prospering factory.<br />Aristotle flees Czechoslovakia after his father passes. He <br />needs to escape as he is now the target of the Russian mob <br />and his Uncle Jacob because he is the only living heir to <br />the factory fortune. <br />Eventual Aristotle ends up in America. He settles in New<br />York vowing to return to his homeland to right his heritage.<br />The story of the Aristotle Mercury story takes off covering three<br />decades of interweaving lives . An unbelievable tale that you <br />cannot put down!!!<br />The book covers deceit, betrayal, viciousness, greed, hatred <br />but is also filled with faith, friendship, trust, forgiveness and love.<br />A Lifetime To Die is a book not to miss reading!!!<br />….I received this book through a Goodreads giveaway. My <br />opinion is my own. Thank you for the book!<br />

A Lifetime to Die by P.S. Meronek is a first read win and I'm giving my honest opinion. This book grabbed your attention right away. I had to know what was going to happen next. It was hard to put the book down. It read as a true story even though I knew it was fiction. The story starts with Aristotle (AKA as Telly) Mercury quitting school and his part time job in Checkoslavakia to begin working construction at his Uncle Jake's factory, Mercury Textiles. His mothers arm needs to be amputated. The doctors are butchers. His mom died. Hes on his own. His dad died 5 years ago, an accident at work. He saves Karlov's life when someone wanted to kill him making it look like an accident. When Telly visits him in the hospital, Karlov's feels guilty. He tells Telly his father is alive in the Institute for the Criminally Insane. With help from Karlov's and his wife and Father Sablinski they rescue his father. His dad is a very sick man. He has cancer. He tells Father Sablinski and Telly that he is a full partner with his brother Jake. The proof is in one of the buildings columns. His father dies. They bury him in the church yard. Then Russia invades Checkoslavakia. It's 1969. Telly escapes to Germany then to the United States. He lands in Greenwich Village in New York City. He meets a widow, Mrs. Schroeder. He rents the second floor from her. He gets a job in construction. Learn how this pennyless immigrant builds an empire and becomes a multi millionaire. He's suffered much sadness but he succeeds.

I was fortunate to win a author's signed copy of A Lifetime to Die by P.S. Meronek as a Goodreads Winner. The book was like none I have read, and is the first that I have read by this author. At first the book has a complicated sadness that seems to come and go throughout the book. The story begins in Prague. Czechoslovakia and follows the life of Aristotle "Telly" Mercury from a young man to when he was an older man in the United States. His is a life strewn with both obstacles and opportunities. His worked through both with an appetite to succeed at whatever he tried. His story began as an almost impoverished young man who was loved by his mother and father. His family had been robbed of their inheritance by his Uncle Jake who had tried to have his father killed. The story unfolds a little at a time, but moves very quickly through the phases of the young man's life. Just when the reader thought he was going to be happy with his life and he had found love and peace something changed that and the sadness returned. The story captured my attention and made me want to know more with every page, I cheered his successes and cried with his pain. The ending was unexpected and was one well worth waiting for. A great read. I will definitely look for more of his books and appreciate the opportunity to have read it for free through Goodreads.