Review: Disappointed
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 05 26, 2014
SPOILER ALERT!!!  It was the title of the book that initially interested me. I do enjoy the thriller/mystery novels of Patterson, Ludlum, Clancy and Sheldon so my interest was peaked. I definitely wasn't expecting this novel to even come up to par with some of the other well known writers but unfortunately, this book did not do it for me. I am not the authority on thrillers and this review is just my own opinion.It starts off promising and seems to progress at a pace you'd expect and then approximately half way through it falls apart. The "diary" part is more for background info but I felt that it wasn't developed enough for it to be included in the title. The character development was poor and sometimes even choppy. There were too many protagonists and antagonists and nearly every character seemed to switch roles at times. It almost seemed as of the author himself couldn't decide who he wanted the main character to be or which story line he wanted to stick to. After jumping from one character to another, I finally started to connect with who I thought was the main male character and his mark, the female character.  The thrill and anticipation kicked in and started to build and then, wam, bam, thank you mam, they are both killed off in the middle of the book and you're left wondering what the heck just happened. Suddenly, another antagonist (or maybe he was the the main antagonist to begin with) takes over and another character takes over as the protagonist/antagonist?? and quite frankly, that's where the author lost me. I really couldn't care less what happened to anyone else after that as the main character, the assassin named in the title of the book was dead, and so the rest of the book was superfluous and I was left hoping that by some miraculous intervention the main protagonist was actually still alive and somehow manages to save his mark. If the author had kept him alive, at least until the end the book, it may have worked. Killing him off mid story not only ruined the whole premise of the book but ruined the plot as I then instantly guessed who "The Messenger" was and you don't hear anything else about the diary until the last page and by that time not only are you disappointed that you even bothered to finish the book, you're suddenly reminded of the title of the book yet wondering why that was even the title to begin with.I really don't like to give bad reviews and normally don't even bother but in this case I had to. The author had a good idea but unfortunately I felt that he failed to execute the story. I gave it two stars for starting off well and personally think that if rewritten with more focus on the main character and sticking to a storyline and not jumping around from character to character, it could have been a much better read. Sorry!