About the book:
I only ask that you treat me kindly, then I will do the same for you.
The words of the invitation whisper gently into your ear, speaking of rare and exotic animals unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. To detective Alex Sampson, however, that invitation speaks of something else. Death. Attendees at a prestigious animal auction are turning up dead, each murder more brutal than the last. The only clue to each crime points to a different animal, but when did birds and butterflies go from being aphrodisiacs for fairy tales to deadly mass murderers?
This book is definitely for the over 18 reader, and should not be read by the easily offended, politically correct crowd or those who do not have a taste for erotica.
There are so many things I could write about this novel, but many of them would be spoilers, so I’m going to have to pick through the book and try to write this review as best as I can without giving anything away. The plot is a breath of fresh air in the over saturated genre of the supernatural which currently is full of ‘sparkling’ vampires and werewolves of all shapes and sizes. But this is not a true supernatural book; it is a murder/mystery laced with hints of the supernatural and science fiction genres; enough to make it be able to take a stand out in those two genres as well as fitting comfortably into the dark detective genre for which it was intended.
The characters in this novel are very well written; they are emotionally engaging and so well-defined that you find yourself drawn to them. This does not mean, however, that they are truly believable throughout the whole novel; there are some places where the reader is tempted to almost scoff out loud at some of the main male leads antics. A little more insight into this character and his motivation would have prevented this from happening. The language used by the characters in the book actually had me retracing my steps to see if I had missed something in my reading; there is no one defined accent for any of them and, although I was quite happy with the notion of different accents gathering in one place, after all that is what happens in real life, it would have been nice if the Author would have given some indication as to their origins.
From a descriptive point of view I found this read to be overly detailed, particularly when it came to the sex scenes hinted at in the first paragraph of this review. There is both consensual and non-consensual sex featured in this book and, although I don’t have a weak stomach and like reading erotica sometimes for the pure enjoyment of it, some of the non-consensual scenes actually made my stomach churn. Not only this, they were just loaded down with metaphors and similes; definitely over detailed. And, this isn’t just reserved for the sex scenes, as I continued through the novel I found it left very little room for my imagination to take flight and fill in the blanks as it were; it was almost as if the Author wanted the reader to have a definite picture in their mind’s eye of what was going on, and not allow any room for individual interpretations. Isn’t that the reason most of us read?
This really is an excellent little read, but it was severely marred by spelling and grammatical errors that should have been picked up and corrected by even a marginally proficient proof-reader and/or editor before being published and, combined with the feeling of being told what I was to take from this book as I read through its pages, led to the review rating it received. Both of these points did a great deal to detract from my overall enjoyment of the book and really made ploughing on to the end a little tiring and in some places downright hard work.
I would recommend this book to anyone in the over 18 age group that is interested in the dark detective/murder/mystery genre, and also those that like a good supernatural or fantasy read; but again be warned this is not a read for the faint of heart.
Cate's Book Nut Hut 