Review: Good writing, poor execution
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 07 24, 2012
Abby Shaw has the hots for her archaeology professor, Ian McQuinlan. Just as their romance starts to heat up, his old girlfriend and fellow professor decides to drive a wedge between them.I will start with saying that the cover doesn't seem to reflect the material. This is strictly romance with a bit of PG kissing involved. And as an archeological base, I don't get where the dress shirt and tie would come in. However, if the author was merely trying to draw in readers with a little visual eye candy, I think she accomplished that.The beginning was strong, the connection between Ian and Abby instant. It was face paced but subdued enough to lure the reader without giving too much away right off the bat. As the story moved along and I found myself on the banks of the Nile with a group of college students at their first dig, it seemed pretty neat and original. However, the romance, although there, almost seemed to take a backseat to the drama unfolding between the three MCs. Where the story started off strong, for me it began to wobble toward the middle and nearly fall apart by the end. POVs switched steadily in the beginning, and then it felt like the author was trying to cram too much in to fast, switching every two paragraphs or so. I really thought that this story could have shined had the author paced it a bit slower. Fit in a little more and spread it out evenly. It could still be a short story and a couple thousand words more, it might have been golden.*SPOILER ALERT*My biggest problem with this whole set-up was how fast Ian's ex, Stella, switched gears. She started off a plotting ex who recognized the attraction between Abby and Ian and simply meant to inject herself as a means of gaining his focus. When she suddenly turned half crazed and capable of murder, I didn't buy it. The fact that Ian and Abby didn't even think to call the cops and have this woman arrested, but merely were content that she would be too afraid to lose her job to mess with them anymore, was outrageous to me. Like I said, by the end, it all just fell apart, in my opinion.Overall, not bad, but not great.