Review: Another Lovely JL Merrow Book
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 10 29, 2013
I loved it. I have read virtually all of the full-length JL Merrow books available in the Kindle Store, and have yet to be disappointed.For one thing, she writes so damned well. Her prose and dialog just flow, leading you, inexorably, where she wants you to go. For another, her heroes are never dumb, self-absorbed stereotypes. They are smart (often academics) as is her writing. "Hard Fall" is no exception. The author sets up a counterpoint between the modern academic who is the main character and heroes/villains of ancient Icelandic lore. For that reason, the land and the people of Iceland are as much characters as the modern academics who populate the story.And what an unusual affliction Ms. Merrow has chosen for her hero (Paul) to overcome - amnesia, the result of a fall from the top of a waterfall that left him injured and his lover, Sven, dead. There are lots of red herrings on the way to the resolution of the mystery of what happened on the outcropping the day they fell, leaving you (and Paul) wondering if Viggo, his new Viking (Icelandic) lover had pushed them off the cliff or if Paul, himself, had done something to cause his own lover's death.I won't give away the answer to that, the mystery at the core of the book, but let me say that I was enormously surprised at what it turned out to be. And I love that in a book. I love to be surprised and delighted and engrossed in a book. "Fall Hard" did not disappoint. Add to that a really good HEA, and I'm, once again, an extremely satisfied reader of Ms. Merrow's work!