Review: A Dark Romance / Legal Thriller Combo
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 14, 2012
I've never been a big fan of romance fiction. Mystery's, crime fiction and legal thriller's have always been more to my liking. A couple of favorites are John Grisham and Scott Turow with their legal thrillers. When I first ran across "From the Chrysalis", it was billed as romance fiction so I almost ignored it. I checked out some of the reviews though and saw that many people were talking about a story line that revolved a lot around a prison sentence for one of the characters and some good court room scenes. Those other reviews hooked me in.I'm glad I jumped. Yes, there is an element of romance here. It begins as a forbidden romance between cousins 14 year old Liza and 17/18 year old Dace that takes years to actually come to any sort of fruition because of the prison sentence of Dace shortly after their initial overtures to each other. When the so called "romance" is finally allowed to bloom, it's a dark and brooding one. Dace never quite becomes who he wishes to be and Liza is never able to let him go.From a crime fiction / legal thriller standpoint, this book was excellent. The prison scenes were palpable. Having been involved as an Army National Guard member during an Ohio max security prison riot several years back where guards were taken hostage and inmates were killed, I can tell you that reading this book felt like the author, Karen Black, was a fly on the wall in that time and place. The names were different but the story was so much the same! Her descriptions were so realistic, fact and fiction truly blurred for me. Of course, the author has a history of Canadian and U.S. prison riots to draw from including a very famous one at Attica in upstate NY, USA in 1971 around the time of the setting in this book. Regardless of how Black drew together the prison elements of her story, this is truly great writing!"From the Chrysalis" is a brooding tale that's told well. It doesn't end well, of course. What brooding tale does? If you read it, I think you'd be disappointed in a happy ending anyway. I would have been.