Review: Book Review: From Author Unpublished
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 05 5, 2013
There were some parts of this book that I found well done, and some that obviously could have been done better. To begin with, I found the writing clear and engaging (minus the several instances where a word was left out of a sentence and it made no sense, or the wrong word was used):"Since when are so religious minded?"That's lets out Charleston."have a lot to be desired."I was able to put the book down at multiple points, and pick it right back up again with little problem. The story kept me turning the pages, which is an awfully hard thing to do sometimes, but there were certain aspects of the story that were amazingly cliche, and I found they detracted a bit from my immersion. Fate is a romance/mystery about a girl who's being stalked by a serial killer, and has just found herself living next door to the love of her life from years past.Unfortunately, the "bad guy" Damien, was one of the most cliche bad guys ever. I have a supreme hatred of serial-killer characters that have the depth of a puddle, and Damien was no exception. The author never explained why he was killing women, how he picked them, or what he did with them afterwards. None of his back-story was explained, or even why he was drawn to this particular character. In fact, as the story starts, he's already been stalking the main female lead, Kris, for quite a while. Every time the story skipped over into Damien's head, I found his actions creepy (as they should be) but his voice was almost comical. He was silly. I didn't get that vibe of "menacing" from him that I was expecting.The other characters, like Damien, held little depth. In fact, some of the secondary characters (Kris' friends) only showed up once or twice and were never seen from again, despite the fact that her life was in danger.As far as the plot was concerned, I honestly think the story would have been better had the entire romance been dropped out of it. Kris has been living in her beach-home for several months when her former-boyfriend from years ago suddenly moves in next door. It's a little convenient, but I'd have let it slide--except this is also the boyfriend that she broke up with because (and here's the cliche part) a female friend of theirs was jealous and broke them apart by telling them both lies. Of course, like every other cliche-romance couple, instead of talking to each other, they both skipped out on the relationship. It took them about a day to figure out they were both lied to and to suddenly fall back in love despite years of being separated. At this point, with the stalking becoming an ever-present danger, the main male lead practically moves in with Kris, and together they work to thwart her stalker. It certainly wasn't anything original.In the end, both of them get kidnapped by the stalker (despite the police help... who were amazingly unprofessional in all of this and started coming over for dinner daily rather than doing their jobs) and Kris ends up shooting the stalker with a gun he somehow didn't notice she had with her.The whole thing was one predictable plot device after another. Not to mention (and I almost forgot to!) the main character was a precog and had frequent visions of the future. Her visions had absolutely no bearing on the story what so ever except to give us spoilers about what we had already guessed was about to happen - effectively becoming redundant. If there had been any surprises in store, they would have been ruined by her constant visions. Needless to say, there were no surprises in this book.Honestly, the whole story was a mess. There were so many ways this could have been tightened up into a really engaging thriller/mystery, but it seemed like the author was always going for the convenient plot devices that we've already seen done hundreds of times before instead. The story could have stood on it's own as just a thriller/mystery if the romance had been dropped out. It could have stood alone as a romance had the thriller/mystery been dropped out-- and the entire thing could have stood without the precognition tid-bit, but together, all of those aspects combined to make a needless mess of information. What could have been a solid story, turned out weak. Was it still a fun little read? Yes. I did find it entertaining despite it's flaws, and it read fast enough that I could have taken it on a bus or to a doctor's office. Would I recommend it to anyone else? No, not really. It was an okay story, but it wasn't anything special.