Review: All the Usual Suspects
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 27, 2013
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean someone might not be out to get you.Okay, Horror/romances are supposed to be basic, right? Ya got the good guys and the bad guys and especially the Bad Girl (named Adair, in this case), and they act pretty much according to type without a whole lot of nuances of character. Then there's the seeming Good Guy (Hunter, a real hunk) and the main character (Jade Greene) wants him to be her good guy, but Adair is going out with him. Then there's the Other Guy (who says his name is Max) who's probably bad, but he's really a hunk, too, so she doesn't know... And it all takes place in some small town on the coast somewhere with a carnival or boardwalk of some sort with a real scary fun house that might be real scary.And if you accept that this pattern is going to happen and this doesn't bother you, there are a lot of fun reads out there in the horror/romance genre. "Illusion" is one of them. If you add to this plotline the fact that Jade has lost 48 hours of her life a few months ago and has dreams of a scary clown with a hypodermic, plus the fact that her mother is a paranoid schizophrenic, you have scope for a whole lot of tension.I particularly like Jade, a semi-fan of horror movies, with the kind of self-deprecating humour that sends her into dark and lonely places, commenting to herself that when she watches a movie heroine doing this sort of thing she snorts with laughter at the stupidity. Then Jade goes in anyway.Her willingness to put herself in scary situations creates a reasonable amount of tension, and working out her personal demons gives an added kick to the suspense.Max is a refreshingly three-dimensional change from the rest of the cast: breezy, mature and humorous, but with enough mystery to keep us guessing.One thing you need to know. This is not a full novel. It's one 25,000-word volume of a 9-part series. So don't expect everything to wrap up tidily at the end. I didn't know this, and I was quite miffed, and fairly disappointed, when the book suddenly ended. Sounds like I was enjoying it. Guess I'll have to read the next one, too!I was given an electronic copy of this book in order to write this review.