Jamal Carter

Where do I even begin? Let me start by saying I’ve never written a review for a book before, but this book failed on so many levels YET had such great reviews that I HAD to say something. Partially because I bought this book based off those reviews. Let me try to save some readers. I’ve always loved a good mystery book but haven’t had the chance to read any in over a decade. Life gets busy especially with a wife and kid. With the wife out of town for a bit I thought it’d be a good chance to catch up on some reading, but I wasn’t sure where to start. I always had fond memories of reading James Patterson books and this book had such great reviews so thought I’d give it a try… The first thing that stood out to me was how foreign it felt. It has been a while since I read a James Patterson book but I never remembered his books being so simplistic. The reading comprehension level felt like it was intended for a 6th grader. I simply wrote it off as the result of my reading at an older age, and decided to press on. In retrospect this was probably a clear indication of things to come, mainly my sheer disappointment! The book just fails to deliver on any of my expectations! There was very little suspense to be found, and the book never comes close to delivering on the hype it establishes from the inside cover! The inside cover is an absolute travesty on so many levels! Deceitful doesn’t even come close to describing it. The inside cover LITERARILY reads like a book report for a book that was never read…The killer is NOT obsessed with the eldest daughter. In fact the eldest daughter only shows up in a couple of pages incidentally. She plays no integral role in any of the plot developments, and only has two occasions when she even speaks. The inside cover says that “New York City is obsessed…with cracking the killer’s code” which made me think there was going to be some puzzle or message left by the killer. Some riddle to be solved and excitement for the reader. NOPE!! No puzzle, no cipher, no riddle, no code and no suspense…. I’m usually very keen in finding out the twist in the plot. Normally the killer turns out to be the person you least expect. I read the final pages of this book waiting for that AHA moment!! The moment when the killer we’ve been made to suspect this entire time by the author turns out to be a red herring which would have made reading this book all the more worth it!! That moment when you finally see how the tiny clue that you overlooked earlier in the book turns out to be a key detail that sets up the twist. The only twist I found in the end was my discovering that the book was over….the twist is there is no twist. Bottom line, save your pesos ladies and gentleman. This book will pose no such obsession on its readers.