Review: Beach Read
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 07 6, 2013
This is the debut novel for this writer, and indicates that she could be off to a promising start, with a little tweaking.The novel is filled with a list of suspects as long as your arm, in fact for many people the list may be too long to keep track of.  This leads to a story that is surrounded by such a tangled web, it becomes unbelievable.  The characters are slightly more believable; although some of them do push the edge of that envelope in being so bad it would have been nice to have had some back-story to base their actions on.  The main female lead is a little wishy washy, in my opinion, given the hardships she had been through whilst growing up.  I felt that this aspect of the lead character could have been used in a more productive way to infuse her with a good strong willed and decisive personality.  The male lead was charming in the sort of way you would regard your eccentric uncle; he's fun to be around but after a while he becomes a bit of a bore.  More time spent on character development would, again in my opinion, have added so much more depth to this novel.The Author describes her books as"suspense, murder, mystery and romance all wrapped up in one..." fortunately there is a lack of romance in this novel, although it is hinted at in areas but, thankfully never developed.  As for the suspense, yes it's there as is the murder and the mystery, but again so under-developed that, at times I felt I was reading an episode of a Mystery Machine cartoon.  One of the main suspects, after remaining in the dark and unnamed, for quite a few chapters is, for no apparent reason, suddenly revealed.  This really took the expectation of suspense out of the rest of the novel for me, which was so disappointing.  The ending was also a little sloppy; is there going to be another book featuring these 2 characters, or was this the way the closing was meant to be?From the beginning this novel I had a nagging feeling worming away at the back of brain, that is resembled something else I knew of.  It wasn't until I was a couple of chapters in that the Lindbergh baby kidnapping struck me.  I think this may have been entirely unintentional as the basis for the plot, at least I hope so.Would I recommend this novel?  Yes.  If you are looking for a beach read, or something not too engrossing for a long haul flight, this would be the one for you, as long as you don't open the cover expecting great things.  It's the kind of novel you can dip in and out of, fall asleep over and not feel that you've been unfaithful to it while you weren't reading it.  There are a few editing issues in the form of typos, extra commas and some grammatical errors, but these don't get in the way of the story.  For me though, there were parts that I really loved, and others that just didn't hit the spot.Originally reviewed on: [...]