Genre: Action-Adventure/Spy
Thriller
Description:
A petite twenty-something tomboy with an unconventional upbringing and
a yearning for adventure, Alexis Stanton is bored with her life. So she quits
her job and starts the search for something more exciting. A strange and
ambiguous help wanted ad might be the answer. Then again, it might be more than
she bargained for.
Author:
Author J.C. Phelps has written three books in The Alex Stanton
Chronicles (Color Me Grey is the
first). She lives and writes in South Dakota. For more visit her blog.
Appraisal:
I started reading Color Me Grey
late one night as I was supposed to be falling asleep. This was a mistake. I
liked the character of Alexis immediately. Despite her unconventional and
privileged upbringing (which could easily have had the opposite effect) she had
an attitude and style I loved. She has a passion to experience life that most
of us lack. She is always thirsting for knowledge, a quality very few people
have. One thing that really stuck with me, since it hit close to home, was when
Alexis said:
Reading
is a habit of mine, not a hobby, but a habit. It seems I just can’t get enough.
I will read anything.
Perhaps some of you can relate. I know I did.
The characters, including Alexis, are “larger than life.” Their
adventures are beyond what you’d expect from real life, yet aren’t as
over-the-top as you might find in a James Bond type novel.
If this sort of adventure-thriller is your sort of read, Color Me Grey might be the perfect read,
although Alexis is a different kind of hero than you might have experienced
before.
The only caution I have is Phelps writing style, at least in this
book, is very narrative driven. One friend described it as
stream-of-consciousness, although I’m not sure that description is quite right.
But if you’re looking for lots of dialog, you won’t find it, if for no other
reason than many of the characters tend to be close-lipped, letting their
actions talk for them. If you’re not sure, read the sample. If your reaction is
anything like mine, that will be more than enough to hook you. Just don’t start
reading if you should be sleeping, or risk paying the consequences the next
morning as I did.
Format/Typo
Issues:
A small number of typos that should not affect your reading enjoyment.
Rating:
***** Five Stars
Reviewed
by: BigAl
Approximate
word count: 75-80,000 words
2 comments:
Happy New Year, Al et al (!)
I see many reviews on the UK Amazon site for this book now. It has obviously piqued the interest of a lot of readers over here. When did you first review it, Al?
F Y I: not sure how it's sitting on Amazon US, but in the UK it is free to download, which means you can't, actually, have a sample. (Boo!)
Do fellow Brits know that you can now give Kindle books as gifts? Finally, we have caught up with AmazonUS in this respect. Hopefully the rest of the things we can't do on Kindle which they can will come to us over the next year or so too. It's about time!
It looks like we originally ran this review in March of 2011, Judi. That would have been in the first two months of Books and Pals existence. (We started the last week of January, 2011.)
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