Joseph Colicchio’s ALL STRINGS ATTACHED follows the lives of two brothers during a month-long period of time in the summer of 2008. Tommy is a seventeen-year-old high school student who failed his Introduction to Life Skills class. To make up for this, he is assigned to a three-week internship at Bon Secours, a continuous care facility, where he is exposed to an interesting group of residents with widely different personalities and backgrounds. Tommy’s brother Alex is a college graduate who accompanies his friend on a cross-country trip to Los Angeles so he can attend a music festival featuring his favorite band. When his friend’s traveling style doesn’t mesh with Alex’s, they split up, and Alex hitchhikes the rest of the way. A third character, Cathy, plays a significant role in the story and Tommy’s life. Cathy is Director of Whole Persons at Bon Secours and someone with whom Tommy becomes very close.
Colicchio’s characters are unique among themselves, well-developed, and believable. Each has his or her own strengths and flaws and demonstrate a variety of personality traits. Even the secondary characters are deftly painted and interesting. The vast majority of the content of ALL STRINGS ATTACHED can be described as everyday life experiences for multiple characters, which may be interesting for some readers, but too mundane for others. Backstory is also prevalent in this book—including that on tertiary characters who are only mentioned in passing—and slows down the momentum. Three quarters of the way in, the story gains speed when Alex hitchhikes with someone who turns out to be a threat to him. Here, Colicchio does an excellent job placing him in a dangerous situation, keeping readers wondering about his fate, and escalating the action and tension smoothly from scene to scene. Drama such as this is the driving force that make most stories a compelling read, and more of it would significantly improve this one. While there are multiple plots in ALL STRINGS ATTACHED, they all carry the same weight, making the book read like a series of intertwined short stories. The book would also benefit from a thorough proofreading to catch several technical errors.
Strong characterization makes Joseph Colicchio’s ALL STRINGS ATTACHED an appealing story, but the inclusion of excessive minutiae and backstory take away from the drama.
~Florence Osmund for IndieReader