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A review by bookber
Pigeon-Blood Red by Ed Duncan
1.0
Thank you to Book Publicity Services for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
This book is more crime noir/hit man vibes than I'm used to but I was happy to give it a try due to it's fast pacing and the promise of suspenseful crime drama. Unfortunately, this ended up really not being my thing.
It is fast paced and I liked that we got to see multiple POVs even if only for a few pages. There's lots of action interspersed with interesting character back stories which felt like a good balance. I also enjoyed the Honolulu sections - especially the luau - as they were pretty atmospheric.
However, the portrayals of the female characters in this book were pretty awful. There were a few redeeming scenes for Jean and Evelyn, but as a whole I felt the female characters were there to be objectified and sexualised. The constant descriptions of women as “firm”, “petite”, “perfectly contoured”, dressed in sexy lingerie, revealing a bare thigh etc. etc. was too much.
The male characters were constantly ogling at women or getting distracted by their bodies. I'm sorry but how is Rico meant to be this world-class hit man if he gets distracted by women in bikinis on the beach...
There were even a few scenes where the female characters were distressed/angry and the men would still be thinking about how good they looked... ew ew ew.
Some plot points seemed very unrealistic or needed a re-read to fully understand what was going on, and by the end of the series I hadn't warmed to Rico at all so I won't be continuing this series.
This book is more crime noir/hit man vibes than I'm used to but I was happy to give it a try due to it's fast pacing and the promise of suspenseful crime drama. Unfortunately, this ended up really not being my thing.
It is fast paced and I liked that we got to see multiple POVs even if only for a few pages. There's lots of action interspersed with interesting character back stories which felt like a good balance. I also enjoyed the Honolulu sections - especially the luau - as they were pretty atmospheric.
However, the portrayals of the female characters in this book were pretty awful. There were a few redeeming scenes for Jean and Evelyn, but as a whole I felt the female characters were there to be objectified and sexualised. The constant descriptions of women as “firm”, “petite”, “perfectly contoured”, dressed in sexy lingerie, revealing a bare thigh etc. etc. was too much.
The male characters were constantly ogling at women or getting distracted by their bodies. I'm sorry but how is Rico meant to be this world-class hit man if he gets distracted by women in bikinis on the beach...
There were even a few scenes where the female characters were distressed/angry and the men would still be thinking about how good they looked... ew ew ew.
Some plot points seemed very unrealistic or needed a re-read to fully understand what was going on, and by the end of the series I hadn't warmed to Rico at all so I won't be continuing this series.