Review: Far Out by Khaled Talib

 Genre: Thriller

Description:

“Screenwriter Blake Deco' s life is upended when his Hollywood movie-star wife, Goldie Saint Helen, comes out of a coma after a car accident with a makeshift identity. Her lawyers see her condition as an opportunity to swindle her.”

Author:

“Khaled Talib is a former journalist with local and international exposure. His articles have been published and syndicated to newspapers worldwide, and his short stories have appeared in literary journals and magazines. Khaled is a member of the International Thriller Writers.  He resides in Singapore.”

For more, visit his website and follow him on Facebook.

Appraisal:

It was the best of books, it was … well, not worst, but also had some serious problems, at least they were for me. I’ll try to explain. But first, I should point out that my review is based on an advance reader copy which means the potential for some minor polishing (fixing proofreading misses, for example) might happen prior to the official book release. While I saw some issues in this regard, they weren’t serious and I’m going to assume they’ll be fixed and thus I’ll ignore them in evaluating the book.

The story is intense, as a reader would expect and want to find in a thriller. The characters and their situation are interesting and clever. As the plot unfolds it keeps you guessing, never sure what might happen next. That’s good, to a point. But there is a limit and this story keeps crossing it.

What’s the limit? When you’re reading fiction there is a concept called “suspending disbelief” when something happens that you know really isn’t going to happen in real life. If you’re reading some genres (science fiction set in the future, fantasy or other speculative fiction set in their own world) then it isn’t unreasonable for the reader to play along in their mind with some pretty wild stuff. But when a story is taking place in the current world the limits are a bit tighter. I found myself shaking my head and saying “no way that happens without X happening” multiple times. Explaining details would be a spoiler, but at least for me, way too many things were too over-the-top for me to believe they could actually come down the way they did in the story without major repercussions happening that didn’t.

Buy now from:            Amazon US        Amazon UK

FYI:

Some adult language.

Format/Typo Issues:

This review is based on an ARC (advance reader copy) and I can’t judge the final product in this area.

Rating: *** Three Stars

Reviewed by: BigAl

Approximate word count: 75-80,000 words