Reviewed by: Keith Nixon
Genre: Romance / Thriller
Approximate word count: 65-70,000 words
Availability
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on a YES above to go to appropriate page in Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or
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Author:
Dana Marton
wrote four books over thirteen years before being published. Her novels have
been translated into seven languages and available in eleven countries.
To learn
more about the author you can visit her website.
Description:
Sophie
Curtis is recovering from a heart transplant. Strange events keep happening to
her. As a result police chief Ethan Bing comes into her world. He’s emotionally
damaged after his wife was murdered two years ago. The case remains unsolved.
Another
murder occurs, with some similarities to the death of Bing’s wife. As Ethan
starts to investigate he finds himself getting closer to Sophie.
Appraisal:
I have to
admit, I made an error when choosing this book to review. I thought I was
picking up a thriller novel, however very quickly I thought, ‘This is a romance
first and foremost, it just happens to be wrapped around a crime.’ So, I’m not
really the ideal target audience for this story.
That being
said I wasn’t particularly convinced by the crime / thriller element. It felt
like a convenient wagon to hitch the romance onto. The opening pages, where
Bing investigates the first murder, felt somewhat contrived and forced. The
criminal elements and even the solving of the crime itself were at times too
convenient.
Twice
friends of Ethan are introduced via a phone call. Both are incredibly
unrealistic – one was tortured for three days by a serial killer and then
buried alive (he survived). The other was a guy who’d hooked up with a woman in
an FBI witness protection programme that went wrong. They simply pop up for a
few paragraphs, then are gone. Perhaps they’re characters from past or future
books, but it wasn’t clear and it jarred.
The flow of
the book was intermittent stages of developing romance between Ethan and Sophie
(which I got fed up on, but again, I’m not the right target audience) and then
another step forward in the investigation and so on. It’s a very gentle story
for one that includes murder and adultery. Sophie several times says ‘Dang darn
it’ when something goes wrong. Very polite. By the way, this is an observation,
not a criticism.
So, not my
type of book but I didn’t think it was particularly well put together. But I’m
sure there will be many people that will find it very enjoyable, so what do I
know?
FYI:
Nothing.
Format/Typo Issues:
None.
Rating: *** Three Stars
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