Review: More suspense, less scenery
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 08 22, 2012
This book has a tremendous amount of potential. While the suspense begins to build from the first page, I felt it fell flat about halfway through. Maggard was a strong villain, believable and fairly fleshed out, though I would have enjoyed more focus on his psychology and less on descriptions of trees and buildings and rivers and boats. That goes double for our two protagonists. Aaron was an interesting character, and I feel much more could have been done to bring his story alive emotionally. I felt no connection at all to Ellie; she was a bit one dimensional and definitely the least developed character. I can't decide if this book felt like a short story peaking out from inside a novel with too much bland, emotionless description of places and inanimate objects (reminiscing about where you acquired a candlestick while your daughter is maybe being murdered and you are close to drowning? I don't think so...), or if it felt like an underdeveloped novel.The fact that the majority of this story is told in flashbacks was sort of confusing and took focus away from any mounting tension. We spend so much time jumping back and forth between several characters' pasts and presents and five minutes agos that it becomes rather silly and downright distracting. Also, the town being described 30% of the way through the book from Ellie's perspective created an odd sense that she'd never been there before, even though this is where she grew up, and this is where she'd come only 7 months previous when her father was attacked.Overall, it was a decent read, but I feel it has a strong potential for excellence, if only more time was spent making me FEEL something, and less time spent describing everything to the most minute detail. I think this could be a 4 star book, and I think the author is definitely capable; it just needs more work.I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for my review.