Thoughts: The Prey

The Prey

by Allison Brennan
Book 1 of Predatory trilogy

~ Goodreads ~

Rating:  2.5 Stars

First, she imagined it.  Then a killer made it real.

Rowan Smith is living in a borrowed Malibu beach house while her bestselling novel is made into a Hollywood movie.  A former FBI agent with a haunted past, Rowan thinks she has outrun her demons.  But fiction and reality collide when a dismembered body is found in Colorado: the real-life victim had the same name, occupation, and looks as a character in Rowan’s novel.  By the time the FBI, the LAPD, and her own private bodyguard gather around her, another person is killed–again, the murder ripped from the pages of Rowan’s book.

In the company of a former Delta Force officer with secrets of his own, Rowan faces an excruciating dilemma: the only way to chase down the tormenting killer is by revisiting the darkness of her past–and by praying for some way out again.

After the prey is chosen, the hunt is on and the kill is certain.

Before I dive into my rant, I DO want to point out that things got better after the halfway point of the book.  Just in case anyone is wondering about the average rating.

The first half of this book actually merited a 1.5 Star to 2.0 Star rating.  The dialogue was awkward and unrealistic, and there was too much of an emphasis on the romance and our characters' dramatic woes.  It really derails a reader from the main, crime thriller conflict presented from the first chapter.  It also didn't help that I found the characters, except maybe John Flynn and Quinn Peterson, extremely irritating.

Things continued to be quite rocky even as we hit the midpoint of the book, although with the serial killings in the background, there was always a niggling need, as a reader, to continue on.  That didn't mean that I enjoyed much of that first half of the book, and I found that our characters had a lot of trouble prioritizing their duties and responsibilities.

Rowan was so adamant about keeping her secrets, or not being protected, or doing her own investigations, that it was making me roll my eyes pretty badly.  She's an ex-federal agent, and I have a hard time understanding why she wouldn't give up pertinent information that may or may not be connected to an ongoing investigation.  What she did could really be construed as obstruction of justice, truth be told.  People were dying, and more people would continue to die.  And predictably, the worse ended up happening because she wasn't forthcoming with her knowledge, no matter how tragic events had been for her.

Understanding only goes so far when lives are at stake, and you have a chance to do something about it.

Meanwhile, her own fatalistic approach to the entire situation really could have put a lot of people's lives in jeopardy.  A bodyguard was hired to help protect her, and as much as she detested that, Michael Flynn and his siblings were there and required her cooperation in order to do their job.  But her constantly stubborn attitude was so vexing because putting herself in the line of fire also meant putting others in the line of fire.  I'm not sure why she couldn't understand that, especially since she used to be a federal agent, who probably had to deal with difficult victims and witnesses as well.

It probably also didn't help that Rowan spent a lot of time being kind of whiny, unprofessional, and stupidly reckless.  Also, I lost respect for her the first time she decided to just point a gun at her hired bodyguard.  Then lost respect for her even more when she whipped her gun out again and and pointed it at one of the characters' heads just because he pissed her off.

Talk about anger management issues.  Rowan may be an ex-FBI agent, but she's still touted as justice-seeking and all good and all that.  What the hell is she doing pulling her gun on random, innocent people just because she got pissed off?  Truthfully, ex-fed or not, she should know better and have better respect for the power she wields with her weapon.

You don't just point guns at peoples heads just because you get pissed off!  Over-dramatic much?

Meanwhile, our first bodyguard, Michael Flynn, spends more of his time mooning and male posturing than actually doing his job as a bodyguard.  It kind of made an impact, because the contrast between Michael and his brother, John, felt so deliberately placed that you could just feel the author trying really, really hard to maneuver John into the main male love interest role, while including a pathetic excuse for a love triangle into the mix.  This polygonal romance was truly unnecessary in light of everything else that was going on.

I also found Tess Flynn very immature and bratty, even if her concerns were well-founded.  She acted like a childish brat rather than a professional.  The security business is not for her.

The overall crime thriller was rather predictable as well, and I'm not sure if it's because the formula is familiar, or if the build up to each new "surprise" twist was just so poorly lain.  It wasn't hard to figure out what would happen as the book progressed, as well as who the serial killer's identity was.

But as I stated at the beginning of the post, as the book progressed, I started finding the book more tolerable.  The writing felt less juvenile, the dialogue less awkward, and the characters less irritating.  I still don't like Rowan, but she stopped making stupid decisions (for a millisecond or two, maybe), and the men stopped being lead around by their male ego anatomy.

I AM quite interested to know what happened between Quinn Peterson and Miranda Moore, though, purely on a romance back story way, which means I will more than likely pick up the next book in the Predator trilogy.

I feel like Allison Brennan just isn't for me, though, as I didn't really get into the first book I picked up by her, Love Me To Death, the first in the Lucy Kincaid series.  But when I read her joint collaboration with Laura Griffin, Crash & Burn, the first book of the Moreno & Hart series, I found I liked her part of the book more than Griffin's--and I'm and avid follower of Laura Griffin crime thrillers.  So I decided to hop in and try Allison Brennan again.

Unfortunately, either because The Prey was her debut novel, or because I just can't get into Brennan's writing style, I'm not sure.  I found the beginning of this book just as detached and impersonal, and deliberately over-dramatic, as I had found Love Me To Death to be.  Of course, I also found the book improved as the story progressed... just like Love Me To Death.

So... Well...  I don't know what to make of it right now, but I may pick up the next book in this trilogy just to give Brennan another whirl.

Thoughts: Crash and Burn

Crash and Burn

by Allison Brennan and Laura Griffin
Book 1 of Moreno & Hart

~ Goodreads ~

Rating:  2.75 Stars

My TBR List -- August Winner!
See Other My TBR List Reviews @ Because Reading

Crash and Burn is a book about two ex-police turned private investigators, Scarlet Moreno and Krista Hart.  The backstory from the prologue gives us the events of three years ago when Scarlet is almost killed on a mission--somehow, she surmised that someone had set her up for dead, and in the meantime, there was no back up to come bail her out.  Rookie cop Krista is the only other officer willing to jump into the chaos to save Scarlet.

Gunfire ensues and we skip ahead to three years into the present when Scarlet and Krista have both left the LAPD to become private investigators in Newport.  The events of three years prior had bonded the two women, turning them from a senior and rookie cop partnership into best friends, practically like sisters.  At the present moment in this book, the two are struggling to make ends meet by taking every divorce and marital battle case they can get their hands on just to build a client base.

The book is formatted like an anthology, based around these two main characters where Crash is Scarlet Moreno's story, written by Allison Brennan, and Burn is Krista Hart's story, written by Laura Griffin.

To be totally honest, I picked up this book mainly because I'm a fan of Laura Griffin's Tracers series.  I have read something by Allison Brennan before, but couldn't really get into it, and was hoping that this second chance would fare better, especially with only half the book to get through before getting to Laura Griffin's part.

Crash

by Allison Brennan

This first part of the book is very abrupt and bite-sized, but still manages to run two story tangents within this little bit.

The Story:
Scarlet chances upon a traffic accident, which ends up landing her in the middle of some domestic dispute involving two rich young adolescents, one of whom might be a bit mentally unstable.  They both contact her to help them with something to do with the other, and Scarlet questions why and how she got herself into this situation when things start getting out of control--apparently between these two clients, there is stalking, death threats, and some crazy-crazy involved.

Meanwhile, she also manages to insert herself into a murder investigation involving a group of college kids.  The chaos begins after an attempted date rape drugging is thwarted by Scarlet's friend, Isaac, who is the bartender of Diego's, a local bar--Scarlet lives in the little hovel over the establishment.

That night after the little college group leaves, a gunshot is fired, waking Scarlet, and she soon finds one young man dead, one critically injured, and one of the girls who'd been at the bar earlier disoriented, drugged, and a possible rape victim.  The incident soon escalates when another girl is found in critical condition, dropped off at a hospital, with an overdose of the new designer date rape drug in her system--her boyfriend is dead in his own home with a knife in his back, and the other college kids who'd been at Diego's in the same group are missing.

The case is being investigated by Alex Bishop, a new detective in Newport, who seems to have gotten the wrong impression of Scarlet, either based on hearsay or something, because he is hostile towards her the moment they meet.

My Thoughts:
Again, this particular portion of Crash and Burn was quite short and abrupt.  While the investigation was done decently, the ending felt kind of like it was quite sudden.  I'm not really complaining, since with only a little less than two hundred pages to present Scarlet's part of the story, it was actually quite detailed and well-written.

In fact, I'm kind of surprised that Brennan was able to include two separate story lines in this bite-sized piece, and am kind of impressed that both had quite well-rounded conclusions following a well-outlined story.

The only complaint I have is that I would have liked to see more of the story on Bishop's side of things, and that this first part of the book could have been a little bit longer.  Instead, it felt incomplete and unsatisfying, even with the well-rounded ending of both cases.  We get little chance to get to know all the major players in this story, especially Detective Bishop, even though we are told quite a bit of backstory about Scarlet.

For instance, I would have liked to know why Bishop was so hostile towards Scarlet in the beginning.  What did he know about her that had him calling her a "disgraced cop" without preamble?  His antagonism against her is much more extreme than even I would have expected towards a private investigator, even knowing that, as a rule, law enforcement officers typically don't care for P.I.s.  And then what changes his mind later on?  And why did he bring up Scarlet's brother?  I didn't see what that had to do with anything.

There are a lot of unanswered questions.

And on top of that, the romance kind of happened as a snap action--one moment Bishop is still glaring at Scarlet, the next moment he's kissing her?  Is this just part of the story because we expect romance?  Because it felt out of place.

There was just so much more that could have been covered had this been a full length novel instead, really.

But it was still quite enjoyable nonetheless, and I'm reconsidering my impression of Brennan's work.

Crash receives a fairly meh 3.5 Stars.  But only because I can feel that it has a lot of potential to lead into a good story.

Burn

by Laura Griffin

Burn was... forgettable.  Truth be told, I'm a little disappointed.

The Story:
Amidst working a marital cheating case wherein the husband confronts her with homicidal tendencies, Krista Hard finds herself drawn into a missing persons case where said missing person's life may be in jeopardy.  An infamous criminal defense attorney offers her a job to locate one of his witnesses who has dropped off the face of the planet--the trial is coming up soon and he needs this girl to testify.  But as Krista investigates the disappearance of Lily Daniels, she soon realizes that there is something more going on with Lily.

Meanwhile, Krista also learns that she wasn't the only private investigator hired to locate Lily Daniels.  It's a dog-eat-dog world in a career as a P.I., and Krista is again reminded of just how hard things can get when people like defense attorney Drake Walker and rival P.I. R.J. Flynn do what they can to keep her out of the game.

My Thoughts:
There was a lot of potential to this short section of Crash and Burn if only because it's an exciting premise, and because it's written by Laura Griffin and I'm a big fan.  As is with most Laura Griffin books, Burn doesn't hold back anything, jumping straight into the action.  We even get private investigator politics, crossed with pissing contests, and gender inequality issues.

So much could have been covered just with those little factors and side tangents.

But unfortunately, the execution of the rest of the story kind of felt monotonous and unoriginal.  Burn gave me a sense of "been there, done that," and I can't help but to think that it could have been developed a bit better if it had been a full-length novel, just like Crash.  Instead, we get a bite-sized teaser of what might be forthcoming in the rest of the series as the authors try their best to introduce these two wonderfully crafted main characters.

Nonetheless, this novella-sized half of a book was written well.

The romance between R.J. and Krista had all the makings of a potentially likable "Bickering Couple Romance," between their rivalry.  But there were moments when R.J. went a little overboard on the teasing and the butting in--he reminds me of an elementary school boy who likes the tough girl on the playground, but shows his affection by pulling her pig tails and throwing staples in her hair, unapologetically.  Or taking her glue and crayons and refusing to return them, only to use them for his own means.  Or taking her project ideas and claiming them for his own.

Really, he's just that popular and cool asshole in school whom all the girls tend to fall for anyway.

And Krista is the tough girl who rises to the teasing, which just makes the boy want to tease her some more.

In a way, it could have been a cute romance until the ending came around and did something that I found a little bit distasteful.  In fact, I plain did not like the way R.J. decided to resolve their romantic conflict, as well as the issue concerning Krista's involvement in the missing witness case.  It pissed me off, and days later, it still pisses me off.

This book would have been a higher rating if not for that ending.

Meanwhile, the rest of the story was kind of exciting, but at the same time, entirely forgettable.  I still like that Krista is shown as capable and good investigator, if a little hot-headed and reckless.  I don't like that there were still so many loose ends, and that, like the first story by Allison Brennan, Griffin tries to cram too much material into the short, novella-length story.

For instance:  How does the little cheating husband with homicidal tendencies side-tangent resolve itself?  Did I miss it somehow?  It's a small tangent and I kind of forgot about it for a while, but it's still there and feels like a very big loose end.

Burn receives an even more 'meh' 2.5 Stars.  To be honest, I might have expected too much and felt the sting of disappointment when things didn't turn out the way I wanted it to turn out.  That's probably my fault.

Overall Thoughts

One of the things I DID appreciate about Crash and Burn was how realistic it was in portraying the life of a private investigator.  Not that I know what the life of a private investigator entails.  Granted, it was still chalk full of excitement, but our authors DO take pains to emphasize how not-so-glamorous being a P.I. really is.  Moreno & Hart have spent the past two years since leaving the police force trying to build a client base and a reputation, but even as they've managed to sustain a living with their agency, they admit that the majority of their cases involve jilted spouses, divorce cases, and the like.  The majority of their time is spent waiting for a cheating husband or wife to slip up so that they can take that money-making photo to show their clients.

There's a lot of waiting involved for these two women: waiting for a picture to be taken, waiting for their target to do what they need to do, waiting for a client to hire them...

And then there are more private investigators out there just waiting to pick up that first exciting case that attorneys would be willing to hand them.

While I don't like how things end up for Krista in Burn--where she does almost all the work, but gets no credit for it; where she just knows that she's going to get screwed over on her pay by a hotshot client she's not willing to antagonize--it's something that DOES happen in real life, whether you're a private investigator or not.

I'm hoping we'll see more action and less bite-sized snippets in the next few installments of Moreno & Hart.  While this book was pretty enjoyable, neither of the two stories included in it felt like it was fully complete.  These were teasers at best, and I'm hoping we'll get better with the next book.


***

2016 Reading Challenges:
• Goodreads Reading Challenge
• BookLikes Reading Challenge
• Reading Assignment Challenge
• Mount TBR Challenge
• COYER Summer Vacation 2016

Short Review: Love Me To Death

Love Me To Death

by Allison Brennan
Book 1 of Lucy Kincaid

~ Goodreads ~

Rating:  3.0 Stars

Six years ago, Lucy Kincaid was attacked and nearly killed by an online predator.  She survived.  Her attacker did not.  Now Lucy’s goal is to join the FBI and fight cyber-crime, but in the meantime, she’s volunteering with a victim’s rights group, surfing the Web undercover to lure sex offenders into the hands of the law.  But when the predators she hunts start turning up as murder victims, the FBI takes a whole new interest in Lucy.

With her future and possibly even her freedom suddenly in jeopardy, Lucy discovers she’s a pawn in someone’s twisted plot to mete out vigilante justice.  She joins forces with security expert and daredevil Sean Rogan, and together they track their elusive quarry from anonymous online chat rooms onto the mean streets of Washington, D.C.  But someone else is shadowing them: A merciless stalker has his savage eye on Lucy.  The only way for her to escape his brutality may be another fight to the death.

Review Re-post Side Note on 8/14/2016:  When I first read this book in 2013, I didn't realize that Allison Brennan liked to interconnect all of her books and series.  Lucy Kincaid seems to follow right behind Brennan's FBI trilogy, which also includes characters you see in Love Me To Death.  This, I suppose, would explain the disconnect I felt with some of the characters in this book, as I had a distinct feeling I was missing something.

On the other hand, this book can be read as a stand-alone, but for someone like me, I kept wondering to myself if I was missing something.  If you are as anal as I am about reading books in certain orders so that you don't miss anything, no matter how trivial or small, I might suggest starting with Brennan's earlier work.

Love Me To Death was written well, but that latent disconnect I felt made it hard to really get into the book.

I didn't enjoy Love Me To Death as much as I had expected to, but then again, maybe I'd been expecting too much considering all the great reviews I'd seen about this book.  I'm going to chance that this isn't the type of book for me; nonetheless, it was well written with a great concept and story line.  The characters were great as well, but at the same time, they seemed really detached from the story itself up until the halfway point.  For me, it was like watching a bunch of actors trying to figure out how to settle into their characters naturally, and for the first half of the book, they just felt hollow and absent.  Because by the end of the book, I've grown an interest in some of the side characters presented and am considering reading some of the other Allison Brennan books featuring a Kincaid.

Anyway, the mystery wasn't as predictable as I thought it was, which was a pleasant surprise.  But the main culprit also didn't lend any shock value for my reading experience.  The romance was sweet, but it also bordered on being slightly dull as well since both Lucy and Sean are the typical main female and male coupling you would see in most stories.  Where I didn't really care for the characters at the beginning (their significance seemed narrated and told more than felt), by the end of the book, Lucy grew on me as did Kate and some of the side characters.  I still don't care too much about Sean Rogan, but that's okay.

This is a good book for a quick crime mystery with a little bit of romance.

---

This review was originally posted at Goodreads in May 2013.

---

My TBR List -- August Winner!

My TBR List is a monthly meme hosted by Michelle @ Because Reading.

The basic gist of this activity is to have others help decide on which book out of three I'm selecting from my TBR pile I should read for the month via votes.  The posts will be published on the first two Saturdays (voting and winning book announcement, respectively), and the winning book review will be posted on the last Saturday of the month.

Click on the above links for more information.

See Other My TBR List Winning Book Announcements for August 2016

(link coming soon)

So according to the masses, the book I will be reading for My TBRL this month is:

Crash and Burn won with 50% votes!

Recap

Last week, the books I had everyone vote on were:

My Lady, My Lord by Katharine Ashe
Crash and Burn by Allison Brennan and Laura Griffin
Endsinger by Jay Kristoff

This month was a slow one for votes, and a close one as well.  And to be totally honest, I'm very happy with the results.  While My Lady, My Lord lagged behind, Crash and Burn and Endsinger had 4 and 3 votes each, respectively.  In a way, I was hoping for more votes, but I was also dreading more votes because I was afraid that Endsinger would tie with Crash and Burn and I'd have to read two books.

Then again, I need to read four books for my Reading Assignment anyway, so I guess it wouldn't have been so bad.

Again, thank you to everyone for voting!

Coming up next for the My TBR List:

• 8/27/2016:  Review of the winning book, Crash and Burn.
• 9/3/2016:  Next Month's My TBR List Voting

***

See Also: My TBR List -- August 2016 Voting

My TBR List -- August 2016 Voting

My TBR List is a monthly meme hosted by Michelle @ Because Reading.

The basic gist of this activity is to have others help decide on which book out of three I'm selecting from my TBR pile I should read for the month via votes.  The posts will be published on the first two Saturdays (voting and winning book announcement, respectively), and the winning book review will be posted on the last Saturday of the month.

Click on the above links for more information.

Join This Month's My TBR List -- August 2016

I decided that I like the idea of using the My TBR List meme each month to help me decide which books to read for my 2016 Reading Assignment.  It was about this time last year that I started having trouble deciding which book to pick from my quickly dwindling pre-chosen list of books for this reading challenge.  It also didn't help that a lot of books I thought I would read at the beginning of the year became books that I either dreaded reading or lost interest in as the year progressed.

Anyway, this time around, as stated, is the August Reading Assignment edition of My TBRL.  I've chosen three books from my 2016 Reading Assignment list (three different kinds of books from three different genres), and as an added bonus, these are also all books that will qualify for my Mount TBR Reading Challenge as well.  So I'm kind of killing two birds with one stone here since one of my biggest ongoing goals is to read books that I already own, whether digitally or physically.  This time around, all of these books are in my library as e-books.

It's a start.

Thank you to everyone in advance for voting!

The Books

My Lady, My Lord by Katharine Ashe
-- Book 1 of Twist series

The Bluestocking
Lady Corinna Mowbray has three passions: excellent books, intelligent conversation, and disdaining the libertine Earl of Chance.

The Rake
Lord Ian Chance has three pleasures: beautiful women, fast horses, and tormenting high-and-mighty Corinna Mowbray.

Neighbors for years, they've been at each other's throats since they can remember.  But when a twist of fate forces them to trade lives, how long will it be before they discover they cannot live without each other?

Crash and Burn by Allison Brennan & Laura Griffin
-- Book 1 of Moreno & Hart series

Trial by Fire...
Three years ago LAPD Detective Scarlet Moreno and rookie cop Krista Hart were nearly killed during a botched sting operation.  Now, they’re best friends and partners in the Orange County private investigation firm of Moreno & Hart.  But their routine assignments are anything but safe...

Crash...
Scarlet Moreno has her hands full with a cheating spouse case when the bartender at her favorite pub becomes a murder suspect.  Worse, the detective in charge of the investigation threatens to arrest Scarlet for obstruction—even when she tries to give him valuable information.  Scarlet risks her PI license and her life to find out the truth, absolve her friend, and track down a killer—with or without the help of the arrogant, mysterious Detective Alex Bishop.

And Burn...
Krista Hart is burned out on catching deadbeat dads and philandering husbands when a big-time criminal defense attorney hires her for a choice assignment: find the sole witness to murder the day before the trial.  The case could be a boon for Moreno & Hart, but the witness is in hiding, someone is following Krista, and her own client is withholding information.  The last person she wants help from is sexy investigator R.J. Flynn, but he claims he’s willing to share intel—for a price.  If she can solve this case, it’ll elevate Moreno & Hart above being divorce voyeurs, but first she has to survive, with her life and heart intact.

Endsinger by Jay Kristoff
-- Book 3 of Lotus War trilogy

A TREMBLING EARTH
The flames of civil war sweep across the Shima Imperium.  With their plans to renew the Kazumitsu dynasty foiled, the Lotus Guild unleash their deadliest creation—a mechanical goliath known as the Earthcrusher, intended to unite the shattered Empire under a yoke of fear.  With the Tiger Clan and their puppet Daimyo Hiro in tow, the Guild marches toward a battle for absolute dominion over the Isles.

A BROKEN REBELLION
Yukiko and Buruu are forced to take leadership of the Kagé rebellion, gathering new allies and old friends in an effort to unite the country against the chi-mongers.  But the ghosts of Buruu’s past stand between them and the army they need, and Kin’s betrayal has destroyed all trust among their allies.  When a new foe joins the war tearing the Imperium apart, it will be all the pair can do to muster the strength to fight, let alone win.

A FINAL BATTLE
The traitor Kin walks the halls of Guild power, his destiny only a bloody knife-stroke away.  Hana and Yoshi struggle to find their place in a world now looking to them as heroes.  Secret cabals within the Lotus Guild claw and struggle; one toward darkness, the other toward light.  And as the earth splits asunder, as armies destroy each other for rule over an empire of lifeless ash and the final secret about blood lotus is revealed, the people of Shima will learn one last, horrifying truth.

There is nothing a mother won't do to keep her children by her side.

Nothing.

Let's Vote!

**For BookLikes members reading this in the BookLikes dashboard view:  Click here to generate the voting box on another page if you would like to vote.  I don't know why the voting box doesn't show, though it appears in blog view just fine.

**For everyone else voting via BookLikes blog view or at the Book Abyss's Blogspot home:  You may ignore the above tangent.  The voting box shows just fine.

Again, thank you for stopping by and voting!

---

Previous My TBR List months at Ani's Book Abyss can be found at the Bookish Memes page.