Sarah's Library

19/6 - This is another 'quick read, review and redonate' romance that I picked up at my library's used booksale. I didn't bother to look at the synopsis as I know Christina Dodd's books pretty well, well her romance books that is. If I'd taken five seconds to read the synopsis I might have realised that this is not only the end of a series (how many times must this happen to me before I learn my lesson on impulse borrowing?), but also not a pure romance, it's a romantic thriller. Now, I have no problem with romantic thrillers as long as they don't leave the poor romance reader waiting till the last 20 pages for any sex to happen. This one looks like it'll have plenty of possible romantic interludes between all the stalker-scariness, I just hope Dodd made good use of them.

Twenty-three pages in and I'm reminded of Pamela Clare's I-Team books - romantic thrillers with the continuing thread of one of the main characters of each book being part of the I-Team, an investigative-reporter team for a newspaper - those books ranged between three and four and a half star, so if I continue to get the same kind of vibes from this one that bodes well for its star rating. To be continued...

20/6 - Okay, so there's a pretty equal balance between the romance and thriller sides of things. If a book's going to be categorised as romance, or part romance, there'd damn well better be some romance.

I'm not sure about Kate falling in lust and imagining all kinds of sexual situations with a suspicious-looking man whose eyes she meets from across a room. It's not like she immediately picked him out as being something other than what he was pretending to be, she believed he was some kind of gang member, but still she was instantly fantasising about sex with him, despite the danger she recognised him as being capable of. Not a smart 'woman who's a reporter with university degrees's behaviour.

This is a 400 page book, and at 180 pages we already know who the stalker is - that seems like an epic fail for the mystery thriller side of the book. The mystery is pretty much over, leaving just the romance part of the story, which no longer has a reason for continuing because the mystery was the reason for bringing Kate and Teague together as bodyguard and client. She doesn't need a bodyguard anymore, so what reason is there for their relationship to continue? I suppose either of them could create fake, easily seen through reasons for seeing each other, but that could lead into the territory of silliness and farce. Hmmm... To be continued...

22/6 - Looks like I spoke too soon, the romance/mystery wasn't really balanced at 50/50, it was more like 70/30 on the mystery's side. The romance pretty much petered out from the halfway point onwards leaving us with the hunt for evidence to prove Oberlin's guilt and a lot of misunderstandings due to the differences (some perceived, some real) between their upbringings. The constant theme of 'he says something, she takes it the wrong way' and vice versa got a bit tiresome towards the end. I just felt like shaking whichever one of them was misunderstanding what the other was saying - they seemed to be doing it wilfully - and telling them to think for just a second before blurting the first thing that comes into their heads. Got very close to the end of the book error-free, and then I came to

"That bullet severed Juanita's spinal chord."

on page 386. I was pretty certain when I first read it, then I looked it up and became absolutely positive, that spinal cord is never spelt with an H (no matter which country you're in). That particular spelling is restricted to geometry, music, truss construction, aircraft parts, and a few other specific examples researchable via Wikipedia. It is never used in medical terms to discuss the bundle of nerves running from the base of our skull to the middle of our back. This kind of mistake really irritates me, as it's so easy to fact check via the internet.

While this was a solid 3.5 (four on GR because at some point during the reading I was feeling generous), it's not something I'd rush back to read or, a month from now, be dreaming about re-reading (unlike some library books I've borrowed in the near past), so (and my groaning library shelves breathe a sigh of relief) this one'll be going back to the library, to find a new home where it can be loved better than it would be here.