Suspense happens to be a favorite genre of mine. I'm always on the lookout for a new author to add to my pool of favorites. I recently got a review copy of Sandra Orchard's book "Desperate Measures". Every now and then, a writer just doesn't grab my attention. Unfortunately, Orchard was one of those. To be fair, this is the third book in her Port Aster Series and it is very clear that this series needs to be read in order.
"Desperate Measures" has readers jumping into a mystery that has been going on for a while. The characters have been introduced and developed. Readers have a sense of what is going on and a pretty good idea of where the story is going to go from here.
Picking up a book without reading the ones that came before it in a series is rarely a good idea. This book was nearly impossible for me to read. I felt like I had missed so much. Despite the way the gardening influence that inspired the series intrigued me, it didn't make me want to go back and read the other two books that came before it. I didn't find myself in love with any of the characters or eager to make sense of the plot that ties the series together.
The slow pace was what really bothered me more than anything else. I had already invested a fair bit of time into the book when I realized that I was no closer to gaining my bearings. It was at that point that my mind was made up.
So....Tell me, have you read the Port Aster Series? Am I missing out?
If you've been waiting for the third installment, you can pick it up HERE.
*I received a review copy from Revell. All thoughts are my own honest opinion.
The only series I have read (which gave me a super hard time finding which order the books came in - I finally had to google it!) is Janette Oke's Love Comes Softly series. My husband's grandmother had the whole series and I read them one after another one year. It was before the movies were made. (Of course, the books are so, so much better.) I need a good series this summer!
ReplyDeleteI haven't even heard of this series. But it is really hard to get in in the middle of one!
ReplyDeleteI haven't heard of this series, but it's always a bummer when you get halfway through a book before you realize that it still isn't really drawing you in.
ReplyDelete