Monday, April 10, 2017

Spring Reads: Never Never by James Patterson


Little Brown & Company; 400 pages; Amazon

Yes, keeping up with each new James Patterson release can be a little difficult with at least two books, as well as the Bookshots ebooks, being released every month. The author's thriller Never Never, co-written with Candice Fox, was released in January, and it introduced a brand new character, Detective Harriet "Harry" Blue - well sorta, since technically the character was first introduced in the "Black & Blue" Bookshots novella.

In the novel, Harry Blue is a detective for the Sex Crimes Department in Sydney, Australia. She is shell-shocked when she learns that her brother, Sam, has been arrested for the Georgia River Three murders.

Despite wanting to do anything she can to prove her brother's innocence, her boss orders not to get involved with the case and gives her a new assignment out of the city. She's assigned a simple missing-person case, but there is one catch - she has to work with a new partner, Edward Whittaker, who is more or less there to babysit her while the Feds are investigating her bother.

Final Thoughts: Honestly, it took me over a month to read Never Never, which is probably the longest it has ever taken me to read a James Patterson novel. The problem for me is that I couldn't connect with the main character, aka Harry Blue. Her, along with most the other characters, felt very flat and one-dimensional with absolutely no character development; just a wooden by-the-book character similar to the ones on television series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

I've never been to Australia, but all the descriptions (what little there were) felt a little off as if the the authors just guessed at what the landscapes would look like. I don't know a single thing about mining, but the details in the desert mining camp subplot also felt a little off to me.

The actual murder mystery plot was the only truly interesting aspect to the novel. I only wished the authors would have focused primarily on the Georgia River Three killings instead tossing in unnecessary subplots. I also had a problem with the dialogue, which to me every character's voice sounded exactly the same.

Overall, Never Never was a huge disappointing read for me. It has a clever title, a nice cover jacket, and intriguing plot, but the novel needed to be planned out better before it was written.

I'm hoping that Mr. Patterson's newest novel, The Black Book, is better than Never Never. I have heard good things about it, so I'm hoping it's a good read. 👍 I'll be reading it next!




* I received a complimentary copy in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.




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