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Book Reviews: Marked for Life & Marked for Revnege, by Emelie Schepp

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I won a copy of Emeli Schepp‘s Marked for Revenge, book 2 of the Jana Berzelius series, several years ago. But it has been sitting on my shelf ever since. This is the year I’ve promised myself to clear that shelf off.  So, I borrowed a copy of the 1st one, Marked for Life, from the library so that I could finally read book 2.

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About Marked For Life:
When a high-ranking head of the migration board is found shot to death in his living room, there is no shortage of suspects, including his wife. But no one expects to find the mysterious child-sized handprint in the childless home. 

Public prosecutor Jana Berzelius steps in to lead the investigation. Young and brilliant but emotionally cold, Berzelius, like her famous prosecutor father, won’t be swayed by the hysterical widow or intimidated by the threatening letters the victim had tried to hide. Jana is steely, aloof, impenetrable. That is, until the boy… 

A few days later on a nearby deserted shoreline, the body of a preteen boy is discovered, and with him, the murder weapon that killed him and the original victim. Berzelius is drawn more deeply into the case for as she attends his autopsy, she recognizes something strangely familiar in his small, scarred, heroin-riddled body. Cut deep into his flesh are initials that scream child trafficking and trigger in her a flash of memory of her own dark, fear-ridden past. Her connection to this boy has been carved with deliberation and malice that penetrate to her very core. 

Now, to protect her own hidden past, she must find the suspect behind these murders, before the police do.

My Review:

This book is probably objectively worth more stars than I would give it if I used stars on this blog. So, take my review with a grain of salt. But, I enjoyed it roughly three stars’ worth. I don’t read a lot of modern contemporary or procedural thrillers because, honestly, they generally bore me. The same was true of Marked for Life. In fact, I found the first half agonizingly slow. However, I’ll admit that past the halfway mark, things picked up, and by the end, I was invested in finding how things would work out.

Jana is an interesting character, though the oversight that made the bit of a twist at the end possible felt out of character for her (because it’s so obvious and she’s so smart, otherwise). The side-characters are fleshed out nicely, too. All in all, not bad for a book in a genre I’m not a huge fan of.

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About Marked For Revenge:
When a Thai girl overdoses smuggling drugs, the trail points to Danillo, the one criminal MMA-trained public prosecutor Jana Berzelius most wants to destroy. Eager to erase any evidence of her sordid childhood, Berzelius must secretly hunt down this deadly nemesis with whom she shares a horrific past.

Meanwhile, the police are zeroing in on the elusive head of the long-entrenched Swedish narcotics trade, who goes by the name The Old Man. No one has ever encountered this diabolical mastermind in person; he is like a shadow, but a shadow who commands extreme respect. Who is this overarching drug lord? Berzelius craves to know his identity, even as she clandestinely tracks Danillo, who has threatened to out her for who she really is. She knows she must kill him first, before he can reveal her secrets. If she fails, she will lose everything.

As she prepares for the fight of her life, Berzelius discovers an even more explosive and insidious betrayal one that entangles her inextricably in the whole sordid network of crime.

My Review:

Like with the first book, I have a hard time reviewing this because I’m honestly just not a massive lover of police procedurals. So, was I bored up until the action at the end because I’m not thrilled by the genre, or because it’s actually slow and slogging? I don’t know. But up until the very end, I was bored, despite liking Jana as a character. In fact, I read this book one chapter at a time between other books, forcing myself to do even that much. It literally took a month.

Other Reviews:

Review: Marked for Life (Jana Berzelius, #1) by Emelie Schepp

Book Review: Marked for Revenge (Emelie Schepp) @emelieschepp @HarlequinBooks

 

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Book Review: Harrowing Roses, by Barbara Cooper

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I accepted a review copy of Barbara Cooper‘s Harrowing Roses from Lola’s Blog Tours. The book was also featured over on Sadie’s Spotlight. You can hop over there for author information and contact details.

Harrowing Roses

Can our heroine save the missing girl’s life … and her own?

Dana feels the atmosphere of the marsh seeping into her skin with each day she spends in the cold unwelcoming mansion of her father’s estranged family.

When her young cousin, Debra Lee, mysteriously vanishes, Dana turns to Henry – an attractive neighbor in the isolated cabin nearby, to help her search for her.

Is her cousin dead? What are these strange visions and dreams that her new friend is having … could they be connected to the missing girl?

Despite the hint of something unnatural and strange, Dana is inexplicably drawn to the surrounding woods and to Henry himself.

Does he know more about Debra Lee’s disappearance than he’s revealing… and is it the right time for Dana to start being afraid?

my review
I’m going to state up front that this book starts out very rough. The narrative is rambly— very stream-of-consciousness that repeats and contradicts itself regularly.  I found it hard to follow and there are some obvious grammar mistakes that yanked me even farther out of the narrative. But the book does eventually manage to reign it in (to an extent) and becomes readable.

What’s more, many (not all, but many) of the grammar mistakes are double negatives so common as to practically be regional colloquialisms (or actual colloquialisms, things people commonly say but aren’t correct). Page two, for example, has this one: “…she would leave, and he wouldn’t see her no more…” Had these speech patterns been used consistently enough to feel purposeful, I would have believed the author did it to provide color and depth to the character’s internal thoughts. And this would have added subsequent depth and character to the book itself. But they aren’t and, when combined with the other more pedestrian editing errors—to vs too, then vs than, odd punctuation, super inconsistent tenses, etc—it’s clear this wasn’t authorial choice. It’s lack of external editing.

I took several sentences to make that point. But please don’t take it to mean the book is an editorial disaster. It really isn’t. The book is quite readable. I mention it mostly because I feel it was so close to being something meatier than it turned out to be. But there’s just an informality to it that I don’t think was intended and this often results in lack of clarity, which kept me from really being able to sink into this story.

If this is where I stopped the review I can’t imagine I’d rate the book very well. But for all of the quirks in the writing (that I think a competent editor could clean up and make a stronger story) there is something in the book that appeals…or there is if you stick with it long enough. It has a gothic…dare I say, harrowing quality to it. It reminded me a lot of The Ocean at the End of the Lane and/or We Have Always Lived In the Castle, not in plot but in atmosphere and tone. By the end I had largely forgotten the rough start.

harrowing roses photo

Other Reviews:

https://ahippiesbookshelf.com/2022/03/10/book-review-harrowing-roses-by-barbara-cooper/

Edit:

Barbara Cooper has informed me (over on Goodreads) that I am wrong and the book is considered to be without grammatical errors…

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Book Review: A Sense of Danger, by Jennifer Estep

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Late last year, Jennifer Estep‘s A Sense of Danger was featured on Sadie’s Spotlight’s Insta page and I ended up with a bonus copy of the book.

A SPY . . .

My name is Charlotte Locke, and I’m an analyst for Section 47, a secret government agency that tracks terrorists, criminals, and other paramortal bad guys who want to unleash their abilities on an unsuspecting mortal world. I have a magical form of synesthesia that senses danger and uncovers lies—making me a stealthy operative.

I’m trudging through another day when one of Section’s cleaners—assassins—takes an interest in me. I don’t need my synesthesia to realize that he is extremely dangerous and that he will do anything to achieve his goals—even if it means putting me in the line of fire.

. . . AND AN ASSASSIN

I’m Desmond Percy, one of Section 47’s most lethal cleaners. I’m also a man on a mission, and I need Charlotte Locke’s skills to help me keep a promise, settle a score, and kill some extremely bad people.

Charlotte might not like me, but we’re stuck together until my mission is over. Still, the more time we spend together, the more I’m drawn to her. But at Section 47, you never know who you can trust—or who might want you dead.my review
There was nothing wrong with this. The writing is perfectly readable. The editing is pretty clean. It’s not full of plot-holes. I liked the characters well enough. But it’s also kinda bland. The heroine is a Mary Sue and the hero is exactly what you expect him to be and nothing more (a bit of a Marty Stew too). Section 47—the para-mortal version a governmental alphabet organization— isn’t anything more interesting than any other paranormal alphabet agency we’ve all read about. The plot is pretty easy to fallow and the villains easy to figure out. All of it was fine to read, enjoyable even. But also utterly forgettable.

I did appreciate that, being assassins, the characters have a little grey to them. But it’s all lip service, the reader doesn’t actually feel any of it. The romance is pretty light, culminating in one mostly fade-to-black sex scene toward the end of the book and a HFN conclusion. All of it is fine. But it’s also all kind of ‘meh’ too.

a sense of danger cover

Other Review:

A SENSE OF DANGER by Jennifer Estep-Dual Review & Giveaway