Review: I don't think I read the same book the high-star reviews did?
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 05 3, 2014
I don't need my sexuality celebrated, and I certainly don't need it to be criticized. I didn't necessarily want it to be observed, but here we are. - Ezra MillerI think anything that has to do with sexuality makes people very interested. - Catherine DeneuveHouston homicide cop Robyn Tate has a secret. A deeply personal secret - she is addicted to online porn. With low self esteem and a terrible body image, Robyn spends her evenings alone in front of the computer, surfing porn sites and "self pleasuring." It seems harmless enough, (although it is quickly becoming an obsession) - but then it all falls apart, as she becomes the victim of a hacker. A hacker with a taste for blackmail. And with footage of Robyn having a "bit o' fun" her blackmailer threatens to release the video and ruin Robyn's life. And as a homicide detective, this seemingly harmless little habit could ruin her status in court cases, as well as becoming an obsession that is taking over her life. Especially when Robyn becomes the homicide detective on a case where the victim was being blackmailed in the very same way, by the same blackmailer.And here is where things start to fall apart. Rather than marching directly into her Captain's office and laying it all out on the table (well, not literally, but you get the point) she promptly panics and decides that hiding her secret is more important than her murder case. And it apparently never crosses her mind that her actions completely compromise her case!The book goes downhill from this point into lies, cover-ups, fissures in her moral and ethical framework, and other bits and bobs of complete stupidity that are less than realistic. Don't get me wrong - having been with police departments and crime labs, I have seen cops do things that are so incredibly stupid that it boggles the imagination. But this degree of stupidity by someone who actually was good enough at her job to earn a gold shield just isn't really believable. Especially when Robyn the Wonder Cop has so many opportunities to admit her involvement and ask for help. She has no moral ground to stand on. Sure, it will be embarrassing for everyone to know her "little habit". But to place her own embarrassment ahead of finding the murderous blackmailer made me truly hate her as a character. True, some literary characters you "love to hate" and that is totally acceptable. Robyn? Not so much. She is entirely self-centered, whining, incompetent, and overall strikes me as a caricature of every misogynistic wet dream extant.Another aspect of the book that I found immensely irritating was that many words and phrases were unforgivably "Britishisms" rather than Americanisms. It reminded me quite irritatingly of that embarrassingly bad bit of writing, "50 Shades of Gray" in that this book is set in Houston, Texas and yet was written as if it were set in London! Yes, English authors can indeed write "American" novels, and often extremely well (Mark Henwick comes to mind). This, however, was not well written or edited. The degree of laziness shown by the writer edges on incompetence. Especially when there are so many sites online that will be happy to indicate what is a Brit colloquialism and what is an American one.Overall, the mystery was pedestrian, but acceptable. The heroine? She ruined it for me. I am going to have to say that, overall, there are much better books out there with which to spend your precious reading time.I received this book from the publisher in return for a realistic review.