(I received this book for free as part of Goodreads First Reads giveaways).
(This review may contain spoilers).
I haven’t actually read the book that these two main characters are from, but I did find this book to be quite easy to follow. I enjoyed reading about the relationship between Tracy and Jeff and it was disappointing that it soured so quickly.
I found it quite interesting to see how the cons were performed throughout the book and the characters’ different ways of handling the situation. I found myself empathising with Tracy, though I was a little irritated by just how many guys seemed to be romantically interested/attracted to her.
I did find Tracy and Jeff’s method of going after the ‘bad people’ quite an intriguing one, especially in stark contrast to one of the other con artists they ran into. There were certain uses of description that really had me shuddering due to being able to picture the very disturbing scenes.
To a certain extent, I did like Jean, but I did lose a lot of my empathy for him due to the way he was treating his children. Tracy’s relationship with Nicholas was much more sweet and more like a family, while Jean seemed to just have children for the sake of having conflict introduced into the plot. I actually couldn’t say much about them at all, compared to his ex-wife.
I have to say, there wasn’t much mystery in this book, in my opinion. There was quite a lot of action, but no twists and turns. Some of the characters did come across as stupid, or lacking in intelligence, or both.
I was… less keen on the ending of the book. I felt that it fell quite flat. Again, I haven’t read the other book with these characters in, but I felt that the ending was quite disappointing. I did feel that a lot of research had gone into this book, though, and while I can’t speak for any historical accuracy, I did quite enjoy reading this. I’m not sure if I’ll pick up any other books by this new author, though. I might give some of Sidney Sheldon’s other books a try, though.
Ink of Blood 