Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Firstly I would like to say thank you to the publisher for allowing me to preview this book early. I have only read one other book by this author and I would say I somewhat enjoyed that book which is why I went into this new release with high hopes. Normally an authors debut shows you what the author is capable of and their talents only expand from there. This book fell short for me however. I was not a fan of the pacing; the beginning of the book started off extremely slow and fumbling. I did not get a sense of what the author was trying to accomplish with the introduction. Random things about the main characters were revealed sporadically when there was no reason for certain things to be kept secret. The book dragged on for way too many pages and then ended without a bang. It was obvious who the murderer was from the beginning, not sure if that was the intention but there was no thrill or horror at any point in this story. It also reminded me of a book by another author where the focus was on a predominantly white community and how race came into play with black characters. In this book however, it wasn’t addressed properly. Race came into play at the most random point in the book and it was minority versus minority. I feel like the author needs to focus one or two major themes and leave the other storylines for another book. Romance came into play at one point and began to overshadow the mystery, random characters were being blamed for the death with no actual reasoning behind it while the most obvious character didn’t come into view until the last 30 pages or so. I think this book requires much more development and can be rewritten to be something great but right now this is not it.
