Review: The Darkness of Shadows by Chris Little (DNF Review)
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 10 26, 2013
I received an e-copy of this book from the publishers at NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.As is customary for me, I scoured NetGalley for new reads and stumbled across this little gem. I loved the cracked and creepy cover as well as the seemingly horrific synopsis. I had my fingers crossed, a lucky rabbit's foot clutched in my hand, and a wish on a star that I would find this book to be everything the appearance made it out to be.Natalie's story begins with her determination to leave the safety of her adopted family to search out and destroy her abusive father that has thrust himself back into her life. She has the limp and the scars to prove that her father is a very dangerous man and to protect the people that she loves she knows she must draw him away from them and kill him once and for all.Naturally things don't go as planned. Her father has no desire to wait until she is safely out of town before he comes after her. It is this little problem that causes her to have to come clean to her best friend and adopted sister about her father and his odd obsession with her. Her sister decides that Natalie cannot do this alone and she will help her rid her life of the fiend who haunts her dreams.That is all that I managed to get into the book. I am a firm believer in always finishing what you begin. I swore to myself that I would never start a book and not finish it. Especially not if it was only 200-something pages. That is such a short read I should have been able to finish it despite not liking it. Unfortunately, after nearly two weeks of only being able to read a page of two at a time, I finally had to resign myself to having to write my first DNF (did not finish) review. It is disheartening that something I hoped would be so wonderful turned out to not be able to draw me in in the slightest.The book's writing was a little off kilter. In the beginning I had no idea who was talking. Since it was in first person narrative, I had no pronouns such as 'he' or 'she' to go off. I had to go back to the synopsis to figure out whether the protagonist was a female or male. That was my first issue.The next was in Natalie as a character. Natalie as a character has a lot of baggage, naturally. She seemed to always be the wounded victim and that may be possibly why I couldn't finish the book. I like my characters to have a few scars but be able to power through it and come out the other side. Perhaps if I kept reading Natalie would have rallied but after making it 50% through and still not being able to continue without gritting my teeth, I had to throw in the towel.Would I be willing to try out another of Chris Little's books? Perhaps, but not very likely.Review Posted on: [...]