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A review by gkneveu
The Black Book of Secrets by F.E. Higgins
2.0
I picked this up in a used book store and read the first couple pages. It's a good, very creep, beginning and very intriguing. But I admit that I probably wouldn't have bought it had been at full price.
I really like the initial idea for the book. A pawnbroker buys peoples deepest, darkest secrets. But I don't think it was executed that well. I think it's a bad sign when you're reading a book and you can't help but keep thinking what a better job a really good author could have done with the idea. I think it could have been better with a fantasy aspect to it. I think the idea might have worked better with magic: For example the book could have been magic, so that once the secrets were written down they couldn't be spoken of again (honestly, I suspected this for a little while, but it isn't) I don't see why anyone would feel more secure with their secrets written down in a book in the possession of a stranger. I, for one, would feel much more ill at ease knowing that they were so accessible to anyone who might get their hands on that book, after all it says on the cover of that very same book that "What is spoken flies, what is written never dies."
I didn't feel like the characters were that well developed. Looking back I can't really describe what the characters were like. I felt, especially, that the relationship between Ludlow and Joe should have been built on much, much more. Joe wasn't very well rounded either and I know he was probably meant to be mysterious and interesting I think it could have been done better.
Also, I was a bit perplexed by the ending. It was not was I expected at all and I think it could have ended about ten pages earlier and I would have been fine with it. I just thought the underground cave and the shelves and shelves upon "secret books" was a bit bizarre. I wish more would have been explained about the point of secret pawnbrokers as well.