Archive
Book Review: Timeless Trilogy, Book One, Fate by Tallulah Grace (Series, #1)
Summary:
Kris is a successful video editor in Charleston, South Carolina with two best friends she’s made her own family with. She has a beautiful beach house and a loving fluffy cat named Pegasus. She also just so happens to be precognitive. Her visions have never been about herself until she starts sensing that she is being watched, receiving late night phone calls, and finding flowers left at her house and on her car. Increasingly, she realizes she is in danger, and right then her old college flame moves in next door.
Review:
This is an interesting mix of suspense, romance, and paranormal that keeps the reader guessing and interested and shows promise in the writer.
Kris’s life prior to the stalking is relatable to the modern female reader. She has a core group of good friends, a pet she loves, a career that is solid but not yet stellar, and her dream home. All that she is missing is the man. The added touch of her visions gives her that extra something special, but her visions are not over the top. She can’t control when they come or what they’ll show her, so she treats them more as an odd talent. This keeps the heroine from being over-inflated, which is nice. The love interest, Nick, is cute without being a god and kind without being perfect. He’s a good guy with flaws, ie, the ideal love interest in a romance that we’ve, alas, been seeing less and less of lately.
The plot is this book’s strong point. It is scary and suspenseful, but still believable. No characters make obvious stupid mistakes that would make the reader scream at them, and let’s just say, Kris is no Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but she also isn’t a weak, quivering Disney princess. Kris is neither a super-hero nor incredibly weak, which is just the kind of heroine we need more of in literature.
All of that said, Grace shows promise as a writer, but she still needs to work on her craft. Her plot structure is excellent, but she frequently shows instead of tells. Similarly, she struggles a bit when first introducing a character, often falling back on the beginner writer’s method of explaining hair and eye color before anything else. Similarly, the book needs more editing for simple grammar, spelling, and typos. The book does not read like a strong author’s work, but it also is still enjoyable. I am left wanting to find out about the romances of Kris’s friends Cassie and Roni, but I am also hoping that the writing that goes along with creative plots improves in the next two books.
Overall, if you are a fan of suspenseful romance with a dash of the paranormal and don’t mind a bit of showing instead of telling, this book is a fun way to pass a few hours, particularly for the low cost of 99cents.
3 out of 5 stars
Source: Kindle copy from author in exchange for my honest review
Book Review: Gargoyles by Alan Nayes (Series, #1)
Summary:
Amoreena is determined to be a doctor and help people. She’s a hard-working, scholarship student on the pre-med track in her third year of college. Unfortunately, her single mother just got diagnosed with metastatic cancer and lost her health insurance. With no time for a job and no money for the bills, Amoreena is grateful when she is approached by a surrogacy clinic to be a surrogate for $50,000 with payments upon successful insemination and each trimester. But after she’s successfully inseminated, Amoreena becomes increasingly concerned that something is not quite right with her baby.
Review:
This book is best summed up as the scientific Rosemary’s Baby, which also means it kicks serious ass. Even people who find pregnancy to be a miracle (people who I completely do not understand) are creeped out by a pregnancy gone awry. This basic storyline then is ideal for a modern update aka switch out the demons and Satanism for science.
Nayes successfully sets up a realistic and compelling reason behind Amoreena’s surrogate motherhood, which is key to the whole story. Readers need to be able to believe that this intelligent woman made a not so intelligent choice with good reason. A loving relative dying with no health insurance is something so relatable to most Americans that it gives the whole story a more realistic tone than it might otherwise have. Also, the amount of stress Amoreena is under gives a plausible other reason for her difficult pregnancy to add to the mystery.
The secondary characters are well-rounded and believable. Nayes handles the largely Hispanic array of them with deft and avoidance of stereotyping. There is no othering of the company or those in control of it. The answers to the problems are not so black and white as a lot of international intrigue tends to make it, and I appreciated that. The gray areas of science and scientific research are clearly depicted while also accurately showing the full range of humanity present in Mexico and Guatemala.
So with all these positives, why am I not totally in love with it? The ending and big reveal are a bit anti-climactic. The suspense is built up so well that the relatively average ending couldn’t quite live up to it. I think the choice to make the main character sick during the climax was not a wise one. The book does redeem itself though with the somewhat cliffhanger ending that will lead into the next book in the series, and I am excited for it to come out.
Overall this horror suspense is a great addition to the genre of evil pregnancies. I recommend it and am looking forward to the next entry in the series.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Kindle copy from the author in exchange for my honest review
Book Review: King of Paine by Larry Kahn
Summary:
Frank Paine was a Hollywood A-list leading man until he let the woman he loved deal with a BDSM scandal in the news on her own, thereby destroying her career and saving his. The guilt got to him, so he ended up leaving Hollywood and joining the FBI in an effort to bring justice to the world. His first case in the Rainbow Squad, however, involves not child rape or molestation but adult, BDSM style rape-by-proxy, and his ex-girlfriend is a suspect. Meanwhile, a former Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who’s been drowning his sorrows in alcohol finds himself swept up into the life of Angela del Rio and and discovering rumors of a place called The River.
Review:
I’m of two minds about this book. I felt the need to find out what happened in the end, but I also didn’t enjoy the meat of the story very much. It’s kind of like when you find yourself watching a marathon of The Biggest Loser and wondering why, exactly, it matters to you who gets voted off when the show get so many nutrition and exercise facts wrong and why exactly are the competitors cut off from their family anyway? Actually, it’s exactly like that.
Kahn builds suspense well. He’s clearly paid attention to just how much and how often to ramp up the violence and intrigue to keep a reader reading. I also appreciated the two separate story-lines that then intertwined. Of course, the reader knows they’re going to intertwine, but how is not immediately obvious. That was a nice touch.
Kahn also moves smoothly between real life dialogue and the chats on an online BDSM website that are a key part of the investigation. It was definitely crucial to a modern story to include the internet, and he switches between real life and the internet quite well.
That said, other crucial parts of telling a story fell flat for me. Kahn does not write women well. On looking back, it is evident that women in his story are divided into the classic dichotomy of angel or whore. There is no real room for three-dimensional characterization, making mistakes, or understandable motivations. For instance, Paine’s ex goes from calling her brother to threaten to kill him to getting back together within a week. That’s, um, fast? Similarly, although Kahn slips back and forth easily between Paine’s and Roger’s perspective, he never shows any of the women’s perspectives, even though they are the ones being raped, beaten, tricked, used, and abused. I can understand using the perspective of an FBI agent, but why couldn’t the second perspective have been Angela instead of Roger? Or why couldn’t he have made the reporter a woman? Regardless, none of the women in the story were believable, real characters.
Similarly, I was ultimately disappointed with who the perpetrator of the crime ultimately is. Without spoiling it, suffice to say the choice is stereotypical, bordering on racist. It was a choice lacking in creativity or sensitivity.
Overall, although the suspense reeled me in, the content of the story left me with a sour taste in my mouth. I suppose if you want a junk food style suspense, or if the negatives I pointed out wouldn’t bother you, you may enjoy this book. Those looking for thought-provoking, realistic suspense should look elsewhere, however.
3 out of 5 stars
Source: Kindle copy from author in exchange for my honest review
Book Review: The Burning Sky by Joseph Robert Lewis (Series, #1)
Summary:
In an alternate vision of history, the Ice Age has lingered in Europe, slowing down Europeans’ rate of civilization and allowing Ifrica (Africa) to take the lead. Add to this a disease in the New World that strikes down the invaders instead of vice versa, and suddenly global politics are entirely different. In this world, steam power has risen as the power of choice, and women are more likely to be the breadwinners. Taziri is an airship co-pilot whose airfield is attacked in an act of terrorism. She suddenly finds herself flying investigating marshals and a foreign doctor summoned by the queen herself all over the country. Soon the societal unrest allowing for a plot against the queen becomes abundantly clear.
Review:
Can I just say, finally someone wrote a steampunk book I actually like, and it’s a fellow indie kindle author to boot! All of the possibilities innate in steampunk that no other book I’ve read has taken advantage of are used to their fullest possibilities by Lewis.
I love that Lewis used uncontrollable environmental factors to change the political dynamics of the world. Anybody who has studied History for any length of time is aware how much of conquering and advancement is based on dumb luck. (The guns, germs, and steel theory). Lewis eloquently demonstrates how culture is created both by the people and their surroundings and opportunities. For instance, whereas in reality the Native Americans had to rely on dogs for assistance and transportation against invaders on horseback, Lewis has given the Incans giant cats and eagles that they tame to fight invaders. Similarly, in Europe the Europeans are constantly fighting a dangerous, cold environment and have dealt with this harsh landscape by becoming highly superstitious, religious people. This alternate setting allows for Lewis to play with questions of colonization, race, and technology versus tradition in thought-provoking ways.
Women are in positions of power in this world, but instead of making them either perfect or horrible as is often the short-coming of imagined matriarchies, there are good and bad women. Some of the women in power are brilliant and kind, while others are cruel. This is as it should be because women are people just like men. We’re not innately better or worse. Of course, I couldn’t help but enjoy a story where a soldier is mentioned then a character addresses her as ma’am, without anyone feeling the need to point out that this is a woman soldier. Her gender is just assumed. That was fun.
Although Taziri does seem to be the main focus of this book, the story is told by switching around among a few main characters who find themselves swept together in the finale for the ultimate battle to save or assassinate the queen. This strategy reminded me a bit of Michael Crichton’s Next where seemingly unrelated characters suddenly find how their destinies are all connected together. Lewis does a good job with this, although personally I found the beginning a bit slow-moving. It all comes together well in the end, though, with everything resulting in a surprising, yet logical, ending.
What kept me from completely loving the book is that I feel it needs to be slightly more tightly edited and paced. Some sections were longer than they needed to be, which I can certainly understand, because Lewis has made a fun world to play around in, but as a reader reading what amounts to a thriller, I wanted things to move faster.
That said, I thoroughly enjoyed exploring the steampunk world Lewis has created after a couple of years of loving the fashions and possibilities but finding no steampunk books I liked. If someone were to ask me where to start with steampunk, I would point them here since it demonstrates the possibilities for exploring race, colonization, and gender, showing that steampunk is more than just an extended Victorian era.
Overall this is a wonderful book, far better than the traditionally published steampunk I’ve read. I highly recommend it to fans of alternate history, political intrigue, and steampunk alike. Plus it’s only 99 cents on the kindle. You can’t beat prices like that.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Won on LibraryThing from the author in exchange for my honest review
Book Review: Horns by Joe Hill
Summary:
Ig Perrish and Merrin Williams were the perfect couple. Their love was the love that everyone wants but very few people get. But one horrible night Merrin is raped and murdered, and Ig is the prime suspect. They’d just had a lover’s quarrel. Ig was never found guilty, but he was never cleared either. Now a year later Ig wakes up to discover horns coming out of the top of his head. Horns that make everyone who sees them tell him their deepest and darkest desires and secrets.
Review:
For those who don’t know, Joe Hill is Stephen King’s son (writing under a pen name, but everyone knows who he is at this point, so I’m not sure what’s up with the pen name still). It is clear Hill wants his work to be considered on its own merit with no connections to his father, but as a King fan, I couldn’t help but compare a wee bit as I read. I will say this, Hill’s writing is strong. This is not the case of a celebrity’s kid with mediocre talent making it. Hill is definitely talented, and I am interested to see how his writing continues to grow and change. That said; this book didn’t quite work for me.
Hill’s writing on the sentence level is gorgeous. He evokes true New Hampshire small town life in exquisite detail and sensuousness. Every page was a pleasure to read. The story overall, though, started out strong and ended weak. It went from a suspense with delicious twists and turns and a supernatural element to a mushy love story and love lasting and staying together after death yadda yadda. I can take mushiness periodically, but it felt jarring within the context of this book. This was originally a book about revenge and righting a wrong. Then the ending came along and felt like….well, like something Nicholas Sparks would write if he was high on crack.
The characterization of Ig, Terry (his brother), and Lee (his best friend) is strong. These men are three-dimensional and flawed. They are real. Merrin is another story. She seems like an enigma that is impossible to understand. Is she sweet and innocent or a bit cruel? It feels impossible to get a read on her. I’m sure that was part of the point. Every man in the story had their own vision of who Merrin is, but Merrin is never granted her own agency and personality by these same men. Although it seems that this was the point, as a woman, I felt a bit let-down by the lack of insight into Merrin. I kept hoping for something, but nothing came along. Interestingly, I found the minor female character of Glenna to be much more well-rounded and real than Merrin. Again, maybe that was the point, but it didn’t really work for me.
It’s hard to categorize this book. It’s definitely not the horror book I was imagining. I’d call it literary paranormal suspense. It’s a classic tragedy wrapped in mystery and the paranormal. It didn’t work for me, because, well, classic love tragedies tend not to. However, I could see some people loving it. Perhaps people who loved The Notebook and paranormal romance equally well.
3 out of 5 stars
Source: PaperBackSwap
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Book Review: Hunt Beyond the Frozen Fire by Gabriel Hunt (series, #4)
Summary:
Gabriel Hunt is independently wealthy and runs around the world saving artifacts, people, etc… Think Indiana Jones in book form. In this entry, a hot lady named Velda shows up at his office asking him to help look for her father who’s gone missing in Antarctica. His last transmission mentions trees, and his colleagues believe he was hallucinating, but Velda wants to save what could be her father’s greatest discovery. Hunt decides to take the case and assembles a team including his best friend, southern charmer Maximilian, and his ex-girlfriend, a mechanic, which is a bit awkward since he’s now banging Velda. When the team gets out to the portion of ice Velda’s father was lost around, they fall into a fission in the ice and discover red ice and a tunnel that just may prove Velda’s father wasn’t hallucinating after all.
Review:
This is what pulp fiction should be all about. This is the kind of book that I finished and immediately contacted multiple friends to tell them the full plot, and then they all wanted to read it for themselves in spite of knowing how it ends. In fact, knowing the ending made them want to read it more. This is the kind of book where I hit one particular scene, and my jaw dropped open and I started laughing hysterically and everyone in my work cafeteria turned to look at me. Basically: this kind of book is why I love pulp fiction and thumb my nose at literary fiction snobs.
Basically, ridiculous things build up and keep happening until suddenly you’re just accepting something in the plot that is INSANELY out there, but in the world the author has created it works. We go from a murderous knife-throwing gypsy who also sells munitions to a mysterious message from a father who survived the Holocaust to falling into a fission in the ice and not dying to leap-frogging across deadly cold water on ice islands to finding an Amazon style jungle under the ice to being attacked by a giant chicken to being taken hostage by a tribe of Amazon Nazi women.
Yes, you read that right. Amazon Nazi women. Most of whom are naturally late teens to early 20s, blond haired, blue eyed, and completely gorgeous. NATURALLY.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. “What, Amanda? You’re doing The Real Help project. You host the MIA Reading Challenge. What the what?” But the thing is, this sort of fiction is just about FUN, and the plot is so ridiculous it’s not like I’m going to go out there and say obviously there are murderous Amazon Nazis in the ice under Antarctica. Just….no. It’s overly ridiculous on purpose. Kind of like old school MTV shows like Room Raiders and Next. It’s escapist literature. It knows it’s ridiculous, and that’s ok. Most of it is not offensive if you have a modicum of a sense of humor.
Of course, just because it’s hilarious and ridiculous doesn’t mean it’ll be everyone’s cup of tea. It is quite violent. It probably presses the boundaries of what some people would be ok with reading about sex and violence. You guys know me and know I don’t really have boundaries for those things though. To me this would be the perfect read to give a reluctant male reader. It’s action-packed, fast-paced, and basically a male wet dream. Obviously that won’t be everyone’s cup of tea.
Essentially if you think that a book version of 007 complete with a village of Amazon Nazis under the ice sounds like one of the best things ever, you’re going to love this book. If you read that sentence and rolled your eyes or cringed, then yeah, avoid it. It’s not meant for you.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: I think this was Paperbackswap, but I’m not positive.
Buy It
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Book Review: Point by Thomas Blackthorne (series, #2)
Summary:
Mysterious cutter circles are showing up in the Britain of the future. Thirteen teenagers gather in a circle, then slice the wrist of the person next to them all the way around the circle. The MI5 recruits a neuroscientist to help figure out the circles before they reach epidemic proportions. Meanwhile, her boyfriend, Josh Cumberland, finds himself sucked back into his old special forces unit when a civilian job reaches a mysterious end. Are the two events connected?
Review:
I received an ARC of this book through the Angry Robot Army, and I sort of wish I’d noticed it was the second in a series. I just dislike reading books out of order. Also, I think perhaps if I’d read the first book in the series, I wouldn’t have been so misled by the cover.
In case you can’t see the cover, it says, “Britain, tomorrow. The latest craze: cutter circles. Thirteen kids. Each has a blade. On a signal everybody cuts. What else is there when life has no point.” This makes it seem like this will be a book about depression and suicide in a post-apocalyptic world, right? In fact the people committing suicide have been brainwashed by music in an emotiphone to further a political power move. Which has…..nothing to do with real suicide or depression.
There’s nothing wrong with being a political intrigue book, but I am a bit disturbed at how Blackthorne utilizes psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience in the book. He makes it look like in the future we’ll be able to just….program people out of it or to do whatever we want them to do. The brain is much more complex than that, and I just don’t like the message that such a plot device sends.
When looking at the book as the political espionage it actually is, as opposed to a book about mental illness in a dystopian world, it’s not a bad book. I have the feeling that those who enjoy political intrigue books will enjoy it. Josh is your typical wounded hero, and I did enjoy the scenes of him training. Blackthorne creatively incorporates reality tv into the plot-line that many readers will enjoy. The characters aren’t flat, but also aren’t particularly well-rounded. That’s ok, though, because the focus of the book is the action and political intrigue.
Overall, the book seems to be an average future political intrigue action flick…in written form. I recommend it to fans of that genre, but others will probably be bored.
3 out of 5 stars
Source: ARC from publisher
Book Review: The Craigslist Murders by Brenda Cullerton
Summary:
Charlotte works as an interior designer to the wealthiest of the wealthy in NYC. She thus has a window into their world and attends their parties, but is not actually a part of it. The wealthy women annoy the crap out of Charlotte as they remind her entirely too much of her cruel, social ladder climbing mother, yet she simultaneously needs the income to stay afloat in notoriously expensive NYC. One day when attempting to purchase a designer item cheap off of craigslist, she finds the solution to her pent-up rage. Periodic murders of the wealthy elite women via responding to craigslist ads.
Review:
I view Charlotte as the female and decidedly less insane version of Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. Both characters are a part of the wealthy, elite world that they simultaneously hate. Both obviously have antisocial personality disorder. Both murder people to deal with it. The similarities end there, though, as Charlotte is decidedly less far gone than Patrick so there are no chapters of non-sensical rants. Also this book is far less violent. Charlotte murders by whapping women in the back of the head with a fire poker. Her murders are about killing the women, not torturing them.
Honestly, this book reads as delicious fantasy to anyone who has ever lived in a city and bumped elbows with the craziness that is the world of the 1% (the wealthy elite). Charlotte’s rage is our rage, and she deals with it in a way no civilized person would, but as Charlotte herself says when discussing the news of a murdered wealthy woman:
She’d been killed by her own personal assistant, news that Charlotte believed had come as a terrible shock to everyone in the city except the thousands of other personal assistants who dreamed, daily, of doing the same thing. (location 1101)
Yes, exactly. This book rages against the privileged in a way most of us can only dream of doing. And it works.
Charlotte is more than a murderer, though. She’s a well-rounded character. The reasons behind her murders and state of mental health are gradually revealed in a skilled manner throughout the book. First we know Charlotte as a frustrated worker. Then we see her murder. Then we gradually start to see the real Charlotte beneath the facade. A woman who was a little girl whose spirit was broken by her mother. No one in her world, not even her therapist, offers her any real help, so Charlotte deals with her issues the only way she knows how. It’s an excellent commentary on why quality mental health care and loving communities are so necessary.
The one issue I had with the book itself is the ending. I won’t spoil it, but basically I’m not sure exactly why Cullerton went there with this narrative. I can’t help but wonder if she’s planning a sequel. I sort of wish she would write one to address some lingering questions I have, but perhaps that’s her point. Perhaps she chose that ending to make the reader continue to think about the situation even after finishing the book. If so, then it definitely worked.
I also find the cover infuriating, because the weapon the woman is holding looks nothing like the weapon used in the book, and that sort of thing that is mentioned repeatedly in the story shouldn’t be messed up on the cover. Obviously that’s not the author’s fault, though.
Overall this contemporary fiction with a twist is a delightful read. If American Psycho intrigued you but the graphic violence and sex turned you off, definitely give this book a read. It features similar themes with less violence and more well-rounded characters.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Amazon
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Book Review: Hybrid by Brian O’Grady
Summary:
Amanda Flynn’s life changed forever when her Red Cross relief team was exposed to a deadly virus in the Honduras, leaving her the sole survivor. Seven years later, when she thinks most of the horror is over, the virus resurfaces in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and she finds herself forced to team up with various government officials, a priest, and a coroner, in a fight against a deadly terrorist plot.
Review:
I admit that I bought this book in a haze that I call “Kindle Sale Fever.” Periodically Amazon has sales of Kindle books where they suddenly cost 99 cents to $2.99, and I tend to impulse buy. Oops. (I mean, if you’d told 7 year old me such a thing would even be possible one day, I probably would have curled up and died in pure bliss). In any case, the Amazon blurb led me to think this was more in the transhumanist/zombie genre than evil terrorist plot thriller, which I tend to avoid. It’s nothing against the genre; I just don’t do politics in my happy fun reading time. So, this book was already facing a challenge to satisfy someone who doesn’t tend to like that kind of story.
At first, it definitely was working for me. The plot of Amanda Flynn mysteriously surviving the illness and escaping the CDC to avoid being treated like a guinea pig was engrossing for the sheer humanity of it. The initial break-out in Colorado Springs was also intriguing with the virus killing some people but healing others from serious illnesses like childhood leukemia. At a certain point though it started to feel like O’Grady was trying to do too much. The book was trying to straddle multiple genres and plot-lines that didn’t quite mesh. Among the things going on: new general trying to prove himself, survivors who turn psychic, Amanda dealing with her guilt, new African-American head detective dealing with being head detective in a largely white city, priest having crisis of faith, little girl miraculously healed of leukemia, coroner who might be a sociopath, definitely evil dude who hallucinates (or might not be hallucinating) some random Russian guy, head of the CDC trying to figure out the spy in his office, and Arab dude who may or may not be defecting from the terrorists to the Americans. See what I mean? This would be totally fine if they all somehow tied up in the end, but the main issue in the book of these survivors with psychic powers is just kind of dropped. We get far more information on the foiled terrorist plot than on the effects of the virus on the survivors, and that is by far the more interesting part of the story.
It’s also bothersome that the main character, Amanda Flynn, is the least well-rounded and likeable. The priest and the coroner are far more interesting and well-rounded, showing that O’Grady can write characters well, but Amanda simply rings false. Perhaps part of this is that we see the priest and the coroner before they become infected and are still entirely human. The story of Amanda and her survival in the Honduras is simply never fully told, and I think that would have helped a lot, even if addressed only in a flashback.
Overall, although the story itself is not for me, it does suffer from some characterization/plotting issues. Thus, I would recommend it to huge fans of terrorist thrillers, who would probably still enjoy it.
2.5 out of 5 stars
Source: Amazon
Book Review: His Father’s Son by Bentley Little
Summary:
Steven’s life in California is so typical it borders on boring. He writes for AlumniMedia. He’s engaged to a librarian named Sherry. He goes out for happy hour every Friday night with his three buddies. Then one day his mother calls him and informs him his father tried to kill her. His father has had strokes and dementia, but in a moment of absolute clarity in the VA hospital, his father whispers to Steven, “I killed her.” Thus begins Steven’s tailspin into a world of darkness and ever-changing morality.
Review:
I believe this book succeeds in serving its purpose–it’s a page-turner with chills. If someone asked me for a simple thriller for the beach, I’d have no qualms handing this over. I cannot rid myself of the vibe though that the idea of this book could have led to a thriller of excellent quality instead of beach read quality, and that is a bit disappointing.
The set-up is excellent. Here we have an ordinary guy with some issues with his parents, but he still tries to live up to his family obligations. Then his father has an episode that makes mortality something Steve is no longer able to ignore. Steve then starts this quest that could easily be read as a metaphor for adults dealing with the increased fragility of their parents. However, about two-thirds of the way through, the plot takes an unexpected twist that then essentially nose-dives off a cliff into a scenario that is jarring and rather insulting to the reader. The book is not at all about what it at first appeared to be, and honestly, the original concept was much more intriguing than the final answer. The resolution is cliche, whereas the original set-up was not.
Other than the plot, Little sets scenes fairly well. It is easy to envision both the simpler scenes as well as the more complex scenes of violence. His writing style is not particularly memorable though. I didn’t once feel the need to write down a quote or dog-ear a page.
One of the more interesting elements of the book is that Steven is a writer, and his short stories pepper the book to give you an idea of his mental state at the time. I honestly enjoyed the short stories more than the actual book itself. I could easily see myself reading a collection of Little short stories in the future.
Overall, this is an enjoyable, if forgettable, thriller ideally suited to summer beach reading. I recommend it to fans of thrillers looking for an easy read.
3.5 out of 5 stars
Source: PaperBackSwap
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