5 stars This book, which I got from Netgalley, earns a solid 4.5 stars, but since that’s not an option, I’m rounding up to 5. I only have two complaints about this book, which I’ll get to in the end. Overall, I thought it was a great book and I loved it. The book was so good that I didn’t want to put it down. In fact, although I was nearing the end, I needed to get some sleep so I stopped reading. I woke up repeatedly, and finally, after only three hours of sleep, I gave up and allowed myself to read the end. The characters are likable, the plot is riveting, and the pacing and suspense are just about perfect. Details are revealed a little bit at a time, meaning there’s lots of mystery. The villain is appropriately scary, and a criminal mastermind, which would have made his eventual demise unbelievable if not for his sickness. I really enjoyed Debbie Baldwin’s writing and her sense of humor. She gave her characters some really amusing lines, and Tox was a fun character (almost a caricature, but not quite). While his friends were barely discussing feelings (peripherally, if at all), he exited the room, saying, “I’m free for hair braiding and a tickle fight later, but right now I need to check in with our resident hacker…” Tox is always eating something, a recurring activity whenever he appears in a scene. Later, while asking for details of a story, the author describes him: “Tox was one bag of popcorn away from looking like he was watching a movie.” Almost as an aside, but more likely as a way to build up a supporting character for a future book, there’s a scene with Finn in which he tells the “bottle blonde” in his bed to get lost. She asks, “What did I ever do to get hooked up with an asshole like you?” His response floored me, “I’m guessing there’s a long list.” The author also takes the time to give the reader a few details about Ren, and after he meets a woman he finds attractive, this was the author’s take on it: “In his mind, a tiny version of him was waving two red semaphore flags and yelling, get out!” I burst out laughing at the image that conjured. Since the book is told in the third person, the reader knows who the bad guys are, so I don’t consider my following comments spoilers. These are the things that bothered me. Emma/Emily has violet eyes. In the beginning, the reader is told she is wearing blue contact lenses. Nathan shows up at her apartment unexpectedly, shortly after she has gotten out of bed, and there is no mention of her putting in her contact lenses. If she hadn’t, he would have certainly noticed her eyes and recognized her. This seemed like an important thing to overlook. The other problem came later. As the team is putting together the pieces of the puzzle to figure out who kidnapped Emily when she was a child, her father mentions someone named Cyril. Ren makes a connection to Savo, but I did a search for the name prior to that in the book, and there was nothing to indicate they should have known he was involved yet. The fact that it made me pause to research it pulled me from the story, so even if it wasn’t a mistake, it wasn’t explained clearly enough to slide into the story seamlessly. As I mentioned, these are relatively minor complaints and the storytelling was so good that they barely require mentioning. However, since they did snag my attention, it seems important to point them out. Either way, I recommend the book and I’d like to read more from this author.
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Elizabeth J ConnorWriter. Editor. Proofreader. Archives
September 2022
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