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A review by becksri29
The Kept by James Scott
2.0
The Kept was a $1.99 offering from B&N for Nook readers. This was the first I've downloaded in the 5 years I've used a Nook. My expectations were not high going in, but the premise sounded like it could be interesting - just prior to the turn of the 20th century, a woman with a mysterious past comes home to her secluded country home to find her family slaughtered. Just as she begins to recover from the shock, she finds her one remaining son, who shoots her in the shoulder, suspecting she is one of the murderers returned to finish the job. Her son nurses her back to health, and when she recovers enough to ask about what happened, he hides from her the fact that he shot her. The book really picks up when they go in search of the men who killed their family, bent on revenge, but also attempting to get to know each other and salvage the bit of family they have remaining. But as they travel together, longing to form more of a bond, they each hide their sins from the other as they learn to escape their past.
The beginning of the book was actually pretty good - especially the parts told from the boy's POV. However, just as the story should be getting more exciting (and for sure, the subject matter gets meatier!), the writing starts to falter and the story becomes a bit sluggish. Parts in the third quarter of the book moved so slowly that I kept falling asleep! The very end picked up again, but the conclusion, although somewhat predictable, was unsatisfying and vague.
Overall, it was a decent book, with a great premise, but I've read better unpublished manuscripts in my old writers' group. Whenever I read novels like this, I just hope my friends get the kind of attention they deserve.
The beginning of the book was actually pretty good - especially the parts told from the boy's POV. However, just as the story should be getting more exciting (and for sure, the subject matter gets meatier!), the writing starts to falter and the story becomes a bit sluggish. Parts in the third quarter of the book moved so slowly that I kept falling asleep! The very end picked up again, but the conclusion, although somewhat predictable, was unsatisfying and vague.
Overall, it was a decent book, with a great premise, but I've read better unpublished manuscripts in my old writers' group. Whenever I read novels like this, I just hope my friends get the kind of attention they deserve.