#insane thing to say after an incest fiasco

[annie-m-lima-blog]

My first book review! Yay!

So I wanted to start a new ritual where I review books that I’ve read. Being perfectly honest here, I’m not a big reader. I used to read everything I could get my hands on, but that is a long forgotten habit. I now need an obligation to force myself to pick up books again.

….And you want to be a writer?

Yes, I know. But I read a book! It was just a terrible one. And now I’m upset because my first review is going to be a rant thinly disguised as something...else? Maybe?

Anyway, “What Are You Afraid Of” by Alexandra Ivy.

Outlines, well-developed characters, and a thesaurus. Obviously.

Ok, so this is a crime novel. I picked it up for some tips on how to drag out the suspense. My Zootopia novel (about cops chasing criminals) quite frankly needs all the help it can get. However, I discovered some important don’ts rather than do’s here so let's write those down (yes, I am aware of how salty I sound right now.) (Also spoilers)

Don’t make carbon copy characters: the Main Character, Carmen, and her love interest, Griffin, are one in the same. Carmen is a gorgeous woman. Griffin has a rockin’ bod. Carmen is a driven journalist. Griffin is a skilled software developer. She made bank off her book about serial killers. He made bank off of the FBI for the software to catch serial killers. (This is how they met by the way) She watched her mom get shot. He watched his mom get shot. See where I’m going with this? I understand that a love interest needs to have stuff in common with the MC but this made them seem plain and boring. No insta love: Especially when they start off having a major conflict. She used him to get information for her book. He was furious about that for months leading up to the start of the book. The second he sees her all that melts away by the steaming, hot, lustful thoughts he has about her body and suddenly she’s perfect, and he would protect her with his life. This happened all in the first 100 pages. Which made the second 264 pages that much harder to read. This scary suspense story was halted several times to mention how hot they thought each other was and in the middle of all the drama they have sex. Like a lot. Being chased by crazed maniacs is apparently a huge turn on for these guys. But on the plus side, she can write a decent sex scene. Outlines are your friends: I understand that these types of stories are supposed to give you plot twists. I was not expecting whiplash. The premise of the novel was pretty intriguing. The book that she wrote was a nonfiction documentation of five serial killers and their victims. So when she got an envelope filled with pictures of women with their heads bashed in, she suspected that it was old pictures from one of the serial killers she interview. It was his M.O. after all so that’s pretty believable. It wasn’t until she noticed that these women weren't mentioned in her interview with the killer that she started to feel uneasy. Notice that the prologue was a gruesome death scene so I know that a) the pictures are real and b) the killers raped the woman before they killed her. I mention this because Carmen believed that the pictures were faked. Sometimes. She flipped back and forth between the “are they real or are they not” thing through 2/3rds of the book. That coupled with the fact that the “maybe they’re fake��� argument only went as far as to vaguely mention the thought every few pages made it more of an annoyance than a note of suspense. Secondly. Carmen is a thin, blonde white woman - the victims are also thin, blonde, white women. It is one of the important factors showing that this is not the original killer and is, in fact, a copycat killer(s)(They don’t know there is more than one killer for most of the book). The killer she interviewed was notorious for not being picky about his women. One who reads the back of the book knows this is the way to signify that the copycat is Carmen’s stalker...because they said so. However, Griffin took a look at these pictures and immediately assessed that she was being targeted. There was no build up, no major revelation. Can the killer not just have a preference? We KNOW he’s having sex with them. So it makes it utterly gross when they try and finger her uncle for the crimes. Her uncle’s motivation isn’t even sexual. This wasn’t a crazy plot twist. It was bad writing. Speaking of her uncle’s motivation; he secretly stole her inheritance when her father shot her mother and then himself. Firstly, how? It was 3 million dollars. So nobody outside of her parents and her uncle knew about that? She sure didn’t. She’s an heiress to a line of grocery stores, and she never got any money. She never questioned any of this? Furthermore, he’s coming out of the woodwork now that her book sold. Why? Griffin said that it was because she now had money for lawyers but she doesn’t know about the inheritance and never spoke to her uncle so...why would he bother? It seems to me like it would cause more attention to himself to stir stuff up now. Right before the big climax for two pages, the author put in a countdown of victims for the five killers. So, the killers killed five women like the first killer, four like the second killer, three like the third killer. It would be intimidating but on the next page Carmen gets kidnapped, and the timeline gets messed up. Note that this wasn’t mentioned anywhere in any of the snippets from the killers pov either. The author just threw this in last second just to neglect it. Not a plot twist. Don’t let the climax suck: She gets captured. The killer unceremoniously revealed himself as her housekeeper’s son. The guy was mentioned maybe three times all together and had two lines in the entire book. He thinks that her father was his father and that they were related, confirming the creepy incest vibe. This wasn’t set up at all but really and truly I should have seen this coming because the only two things I know about her father were contradictory to each other. I know that he adored his wife and that he killed his wife. Ronnie (the brother) admitted that he was the one who killed both her parents in a rage over being denied as the son. To cope with the trauma Carmen ….suppressed the knowledge that Ronnie was there and only remembered seeing the bodies of her parents? Because someone she admits to not knowing well killing her parents is more traumatic than her father killing her mother? That is most certainly NOT a plot twist. Then the author decided to write a plot twist inside of a plot twist creating a weird plot twist inception. It turns out that Ronnie was fed information by Carmen’s cousin to make him believe that he was Carmen’s brother. He's not, but the cousin wanted to drive Carmen's father away to protect the company from going bankrupt. Because he was worried about this at 15? Why did he even think that Carmen's father would back away from his only source of income over that? This cousin, let’s call him Ted because I already forgot his name, was part of Ronnie’s team and decided to tell him all of this after Griffin showed up to save Carmen, during their daring escape. Was there not a more convenient time to do this? Really? Do you have to do this right now? At least he killed Ronnie, forcing the author to stop calling him “unstable” and “insane” every few lines. Yes, I get it. You don’t have to tell me 23 times in 10 pages. Finally, they did the classic “Tim pulled a gun on Carmen so Griffin pulled a gun on Tim” fiasco. Law and Order SVU taught me that if you shoot the guy who has a gun on your friend his reflexes will pull the trigger on your friend. So I don’t care what the author says, Carmen’s dead. Reality doesn’t just stop because you want it to. Don’t add bad plot twists in the epilogue: After this is over, Griffin starts driving to Carmen’s uncle’s house while daydreaming about marrying Carmen (a whopping three weeks after their first meet) He storms into his office and makes a show of threatening the dude for Carmen’s inheritance. (You just said you’d marry her. You’re a millionaire. Why does it matter?) He admits to having it and agrees to repay her. He also admits to trying to run them off the road into a ravine that one time. So he’s a wannabe killer now too. Cool. You just tied up loose ends. STILL not a plot twist.

Those were all just the “big issues” I had with the story. The writing annoyed me too. I was told the same information 18 hundred times throughout the story. The clues were also unceremoniously thrown in as question that a character asked him(her)self. Every time. Also, I head hopped the entire time. We get Carmen’s, Griffin’s and Ronnie’s pov’s. We also got pov’s of three of the victims. It was overly disjointed and seemed smashed together.

Decent point: Those death scenes in the pov of the victim who was getting killed was admittedly pretty chilling. Kudos.

….I don’t have a way to end this...so bye? I guess? I’ll be reading Stephen King’s “Carrie” next. So hopefully my next review will be a happier one.