breve

Title: Eve
(Eve Duncan #12)
Author: Iris Johansen
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Romance
First published: April 1st 2011
Finished reading: March 6th 2016
Pages: 378
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“Yes, that was it. That was exactly what John Gallo was. A fever that would leave her if she didn’t let it take over her mind as well as her body.”

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I don’t like being this negative in my reviews, but in this case I really feel like I don’t have a choice. First of all the blurb of Eve is really misleading. It is sold as the first book in a new trilogy, but it is actually the twelfth book in a series and if you haven’t read the previous books (like myself), you will find a lot of details are missing. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only problem I encountered while reading this novel by Iris Johansen. The biggest setback was that I wasn’t a fan of the prose. To be more specific: the physical attraction/romance scenes were cringeworthy to say the least and made reading this story almost feel like voluntary torture. I know I’m not a romance fan and that might have made things worse, but I know a badly written romance scene when I see one. I hate to be so negative about a book, but I truly wish I would have decided to just DNF it… Because it truly felt like a waste of time. The ending was not satisfying at all and from what I saw in other reviews is that it is kind of a pattern to never reveal the identity of Bonnie’s killer. As you might have guessed, I wouldn’t recommend reading this book.

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Eve Duncan is a forensic sculptor and is able to help families find closure by piece back together bones, create a face and give the deceased back their identity. She is good at what she does and extremely driven, especially after her own daughter Bonnie was taken from her years ago. Eve never found out what happened to her daughter and is still obsessed with the case… So when a name from the past resurfaces, she dives right in even though it might be dangerous. She doesn’t want her boyfriend or good friend Catherine to be involved, but they follow her anyway… And things will become both dangerous and complicated real soon.

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When I first saw this copy of Eve at my hostel’s book exchange I was immediately intrigued by the cover and blurb. ‘FIRST IN A BREATHTAKING NEW TRILOGY‘ it said… It sounded like the perfect mystery/thriller read, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. I actually DNFed it the first time around and I wish I would have let it stay that way, because I had a really hard time finishing this read. The horrible physical attraction/romance scenes made it really hard to focus on the rest of the story and the plot was quite slow and unbelievable in the first place. Unfortunately not a series I will be reading more of in the future.