Brief Thoughts: Almost Dead

Almost Dead

by Lisa Jackson
Book 2 of San Francisco

~ Goodreads ~

Rating:  3.0 Stars

A Woman Who Wants To Get Even . . .

The first victim is pushed to her death.  The second suffers a fatal overdose.  The third takes a bullet to the heart.  Three down, more to go.  They're people who deserve to die.  People who are in the way.  And when she's finished, there will be no one left. . .

Will Do Whatever It Takes For Revenge. . .

Cissy Cahill's world is unraveling fast.  One by one, members of her family are dying.  Cissy's certain she's being watched.  Or is she losing her mind?  Lately she's heard footsteps when there's no one around, smelled a woman's perfume, and noticed small, personal items missing from her house.  Cissy's right to be afraid--but not for the reason she thinks.  The truth is much more terrifying. . .

Including Murder. . .

Hidden in the shadows of the Cahill family's twisted past is a shocking secret--a secret that will only be satisfied by blood.  And Cissy must uncover the deadly truth before it's too late, because fear is coming home. . .with a vengeance. . .

Personal biases aside, this was actually not as bad as I had been expecting, though not as great as I'd hoped for either.  While the beginning was kind of slow to get into, and the characters were hard to really relate with or like, this was overall pretty entertaining with a plot twist that was actually quite startling, in a good way.

Still, lots of plot holes, and try as I might, I couldn't really get myself to like any of the characters.  Even the sometimes adorable toddler got annoying at times.  And I felt like a lot of the family conflict felt unnecessary, but kept in tone with the whole dysfunctional family theme going on.

One of the things that has always bugged me about the few Lisa Jackson books I've read is the exposition fairy insertion.  At some point in time (or several moments, in this book), someone will sit down and have a discussion, outlining what's going on in the story, detail by detail.  As if the reader had the memory of a goldfish and didn't already know all the facts up to that point.

There were a few scenes at the beginning like this, and several little moments where our main detective did as much, giving the same details and reasons over and over again as to why certain people couldn't be a suspect.  So on and so forth.

This kind of insertion is often times jarring to a reader.  I would like to just move forward with the story rather than sit around discussing what's happened since we last convened three pages ago.  And I don't need to be told five times that Cissy couldn't possibly be the killer--after all, this is a romantic suspense novel, romance being first priority.  It'd be a little hard to have a Happily Ever After™ if our main heroine were a psychotic murderer.

Again, I also had some problems with the characters, but not so much that I didn't like them as much as I just felt like they were NOT interesting, in the least.  And we'll just leave it at that.

The ending picked up and got a little more exciting.  The empty mansion scene where the elevator frightens Cissy was actually done pretty well.  The horrific twist near the ending was also, as I've stated, quite startling, and I liked it.

Otherwise, this is a nice book you can read on a rainy day if you've got nothing else on hand.