MentEveryWord

I wanted to enjoy this story but I kept getting pulled out of the plot by the author’s repetitive writing. Events were restated constantly, as if the reader might forget what had just occurred immediately after reading it. This constant repetition made the book feel more like the work of a middle school creative writing student than a finished novel.

Continuing the feel of it being a middle school writer’s work, the author relied heavily on telling rather than showing. The long soliloquies between main characters where they explicitly stated facts, emotions, and motivations took away from the reader’s opportunity to find them naturally. The book also had endless descriptions of basic concepts, as if the author didn’t trust the reader to have a 5th grade understanding of anything. I mean, the author felt the need to tell us that crime scene techs use chemicals to make trace amounts of blood to light up. If I recall correctly, he also had this explained to the female main character, Dr. Sloan Hastings who is in a two year fellowship with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Why on earth would she need to have luminol explained to her like she has never heard of it?  And do not even get me started on the author seeming confused about what details really mattered. He spent too much time and attention telling us detail after detail about trivial things like kettlebell and CrossFit workouts.

In the end, the plot also hinges on something that couldn’t happen. Coupling that impossible element with the fact that the author spent significant amounts of time discussing details of this element, the fact that this error made it past the editor is astounding. 

The factual plot issue was not the only issue with the ending. The whole ending was outlandish to the extreme. The entire book could have been avoided with some basic detective work by the FBI on day one. Did the FBI even attempt to solve this crime? 

The more time I spent writing this review, the lower this book’s rating went. This book feels like barely 3 stars. The only thing that keeps it from dropping below a 3 is that it did keep my attention long enough to prevent me from putting it down and forgetting about it.