Packer’s ‘Songs’ sinks

  I might be in the minority here, but I was unimpressed with Ann Packer’s “Songs Without Words.”
  Packer follows her popular “The Dive from Clausen’s Pier” with a novel about the childhood friendship between two girls and how it changes into their adulthood as both women face their own problems. Sarabeth continues to be haunted by her mother’s suicide. Liz struggles to help her daughter after the teen attempts suicide.
  Can anyone say Lifetime movie? Let’s hope not.
  The characters’ struggles are underdeveloped. The reader never really can relate to the emotional turmoil that would drive a teen to attempt suicide, which could have been compelling.
  The friendship between the two women lacked authenticity and the female characters themselves got on my nerves. Every other paragraph someone was crying, sobbing, weeping or otherwise bursting into tears.
 So I’d advise readers to spare themselves the waterworks and skip “Songs.”