I’m not sure why I took a chance on this second book in the series when I found the first one rather blah. I guess I hoped there would be improvements to pacing and structure and character development, but unfortunately this one was even worse than the first. I struggled through it and generally found all of the characters to be unlikeable, the dialogue unrealistic, and the plot flimsy. There were several points where a keen-eyed editor was needed including typos and one bizarre reference to “prohibition looming” which doesn’t even make any sense because the book takes place in the United States and bounces back and forth between the late 1980s and present day, both of which are incredibly far removed from Prohibition, which occurred 1920-1933. There were also a couple instances where something involving government procedure did not happen at all realistically and one of the characters would say something along the lines of, “even though it usually takes weeks to process the paperwork, I had it the next day.” Haha, what. Okay. Little things like that really threw me right out of the story and made me question the book, the author, and my own sanity. (Though, to be fair, I was reading an ARC, so it’s possible some of the issues I saw were fixed before final publication.) Even if some of these issues got fixed in the final version, it was still a slog to get through.
This review originally appeared on NetGalley. I received a free Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) in exchange for my honest review of this title.
Alisa Williams is the managing editor of SpectrumMagazine.org. She blogs at alisawilliamswrites.com, tweets at @AWWritesStories, and bookstagrams at @AllyWritesStories.
Book cover image courtesy of Amazon Publishing UK.
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