I grabbed Susan Griscom‘s Whisper Cape from the Amazon free list. This is review number four of my Taking Care of My Own Challenge.

Ridiculously Long Description from Goodreads:

Escape to a world where the impossible becomes possible. WHISPER CAPE is a town of secrets and Addison MacKenna soon becomes tangled in a web of them. Plagued with nightmares of her father’s sudden and brutal death, Addie struggles with her anguish and refuses to believe his demise was accidental. 

Fighting to shake off one of those devastating early morning nightmares, Addison finds it even harder to escape from the vision of a man lying on the side of the road—a man she may have just killed. When she frantically tries to locate him, he seemingly disappears, just the beginning of strange occurrences in her life. She also cannot ignore the weird sensations in her own body. Suddenly, the impossible seems possible, but is that a blessing or a curse? 

Believing that her continual and worsening nightmares are both the key to her own new abilities and the clue to her father’s death, Addie knows she will not rest until she has the answers she craves. As she strives to cope with her new remarkable talents, someone else learns of her abilities—a disgruntled maniacal psychopath with his own agenda that involves eliminating Addie. The only one who can protect her, instruct her in the use of her powers and teach her how to destroy the murderous monster is the same man who makes Addie’s heart race and her blood heat with passion. The same man she’d left for dead. 

Cael Sheridan may be arrogant and mysterious but he’s also undeniably gorgeous. A member of a secret society, he is sworn to protect the woman he believes to be the daughter of his recently murdered mentor. In the process, he finds it impossible to resist her magnetic sensuality, complicating his efforts to shield and guide her as she learns to manage her newly acquired skills. At the same time, Addison has much to teach him about trust and commitment. Fate has brought them together, but will it make them stronger or destroy them both in end?

Review:
I have to be honest, I hate giving bad reviews but I’m thrilled to be done with this book. I was beginning to think I might never reach the end and it really wasn’t ringing any bells for me. Mostly because I disliked the heroine, Addie, and didn’t particularly care for the hero, Cael, either.

Addie was pitiful in almost every sense of the word. In the first 1/4 of the book she had nightmares, almost ran someone over and drove off a cliff, bumped her head into a metal sign so hard she almost fell onto jagged rocks, fell over a cliff and almost died (Seriously, who falls off a cliff that they know they’re standing on because they don’t pay attention to where they put their feet?), got buzzed off two beers and head spinning, passing out drunk off three. The trend only continued after that, tripping into Cael’s arms, staggering on her big girl high heals, etc.

It all made her feel like she couldn’t take care of herself. And not only because of her ridiculous accident proneness, but in little things like her tendency to forget to eat and the crying (even crying herself to sleep at one point). She’s either very child-like or just basically inept and a failure as an adult. I’m going with the latter, since at 26 she had only just gotten her first apartment on her own.

Then there were passages like this, “…the spell of his kisses rendering her helpless. His hands were so sure and knowledgeable…” Yes, that’s obviously a statement that needs to be considered in context, but that’s also essentially the ongoing dichotomy here. She’s helpless and he’s sure. Everyone knows more than Addie. Everyone is more capable than Addie. Everyone looks out for poor fragile, naive Addie. Gag. Helpless women (especially ones who are contradictorily made out to be strong and capable, despite what is shown) drive me up the wall.

Cael, was just…well, I don’t know how to say this less bluntly, but just too predictable. Almost everything, no matter how ridiculous, was seen a mile in advance or a PNR trope. For example, deciding Addie would be better off without him and trying to push her away by being verbally cruel in order to make her believe he doesn’t care for her (for her own good, of course). A) stupid and makes no sense. How is hurting her protecting her? B) a regular, and no less hated for it, PNR event.

Addie’s limp-ragness was the main reason I disliked the book, but a close second was that I kept asking, ‘where is the antagonist?’ No, seriously, he shows up for about a page at 75% (where we see a quick cliché baddie monologue along the lines of  “oh, they’ll pay…blah, blah, blah”) and then for about 3 pages at 95% (where he is defeated with painful ease) otherwise he’s just a cut-out for Cael to protect Addie from while 98% of the book is dedicated to their lightning-speed romance or sex. What more, he had ample access and opportunity to kill, kidnap, maim, rape, or whatever Addie before the big reveal and climactic fight. So, why didn’t he?

Despite all the sex the book has a very YA feel. The way a big deal is made of Addie and Cael having sex, the ‘parent figures’ being seriously over-protective and everyone’s mental agony over being a ‘boyfriend’ or not. These are supposed to be adults? No, these felt like teenagers, with teenage issues.

I found the writing repetitive, in the sense that the reader is told the same thing over and over again, but also in that things happen and then the characters tell other characters about it or events are relayed from various characters. Like Darcy talking about why she and Jarod broke up and then Jarod telling Addie why he and Darcy broke up. Same story, why do I need to hear it twice? Then again, after hearing the story twice, why do we also need multiple reminders of it? (Like Darcy in the bath remembering it.)

I also found the dialogue often (but not always) stiff, occasionally losing contractions, saying names too frequently, or too often starting a comment with yes or please, for example. Whatever the reason, it didn’t feel natural to me. This lent an oddly formal feel to the book.

Lastly, random odd POVs are thrown in occasionally. Despite being side characters we see Darcy and Jarod’s POV. I didn’t understand why. Their small side-story didn’t contribute enough to the plot to necessitate (or excuse) breaking the set POV pattern for inclusion. So I often found myself wondering why I was watching them do whatever unimportant thing they were doing.

All in all, not a winner for me. Believe it or not I dropped a number of minor complaints because I thought too much more would start to border on cruelty.  The above is just my opinion and I apologise for not having more positives to sandwich in there, but by the time I finally finished I was just too far past objectivity to manage it. I disliked the book, but you’ll notice I’ve never claimed it isn’t a quality book or unworthy of being read. The book has an interesting premise and I know a lot of people enjoy it. Maybe you’ll be one of them, even if I wasn’t.