Reviews

Delirium by J.F. Penn

johnbreeden's review against another edition

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5.0

I'm officially a fan! Two books into the series, and I have to say that J.F. Penn is becoming a favorite. The characters are flawed, real, and robust.

melindavan's review against another edition

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5.0

I could not put this one down! Tension, stuff happening, horribly unbelievable things people do to one another...all with enough truth to them to make me shudder. And mostly, I got to the last page and aghghghgh! Must know what happens in the next book! Which isn't out yet. 0.o Seriously good read. I'll be waiting anxiously for the next one.

gillian_fx's review against another edition

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4.0

J.F. Penn’s Delirium is like Nancy Drew on acid. J.F. delivers a sensory overload on this one, by that I mean the way she describes everything from the oil slick on the street to the smell of rotted bodies, really takes the reader to that place in the story. At times I felt like there was too much information that didn’t really move the scenes forward but other times they worked really well. These books are not for the faint of heart, if you really get engaged in a book to where you smell and see the locations be aware.

I would have loved to learn more about Blake Daniel, I loved his character from the first novel in the series, Desecration. We got a little teaser about him when we found out that his estranged father was dying and he returned home. We even met his mother, but all of that was glazed over.
Blake has special powers that allows him to see the history of an object by holding on to it. Neat right? Not so much if you’re Blake, some of the things that he sees are absolutely horrendous! One scene that stuck out in my mind was of him seeing demons opening his dying father’s skull and eating his brain. Blake finds his father’s grimoire, and of course I wanted to know more, but Blake was kidnapped and that was kind of the end of that.

I would have liked to see more interaction between Blake and Jamie, they have such awesome similarities; they are both such broken characters and it left me yearning for them to turn to each other. Their paths crossed when Jamie asked him to help her on a case she was working on (Jamie is a detective), but Blake declined because he was dealing with facing his dying father who treated him like a demon seed all his life. By the way, his father was a man of the cloth. Jamie and Blake meet again towards the end. I’m not going to say more on that because I don’t want to give away anything. I would have prefered to read more about Blake than the politician. I love the way it ended, it had me shouting “you go girl!” about Jamie’s character’s making the decision to make her own destiny.

Overall I enjoyed this story but it didn’t connect for me like Desecration. Thank goodness I bought the next book in the series, Deviance I started reading it right away. It is the final book in the trilogy and I can’t wait to see where J.F. takes it.

One of the things I really love about J.F.’s novels are the research that she puts into it to make sure everything is accurate. At the back of the book she shares her experiences and I really appreciate that. Thank you J.F. for reminding us that we all have a little “crazy” in us and that is quite normal.
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