Cold Fear, by Rick Mofina
Cold Fear, by Rick Mofina, is the “mystery or thriller” choice for my 2017 Reading Challenge.
I tried really hard to get into this book, and then I tried really hard to stay there. I mean, I really tried. I even kept going after “gorgeous hunk of manhood”, for crying out loud - though to be fair, I knew I should have stopped right there.
I usually give up after multiple typos and grammatical errors, but the story initially hooked me. We start with a scene of a girl running off, her last memory of her camp being Daddy's ax dripping with blood. Okay, great hook. It gets a bit muddy as the girl is terrified of whatever 'monster' her mom said was out there. Which isn't a smart idea from a parental viewpoint, and also from a writing viewpoint. Please don't string the reader along for three or four chapters before you start clarifying whatever Mom's Monster is. Especially when Mom is a viewpoint character and if she knows, we should know.
But Mom is not the only viewpoint character. The book hops around from character to character, which would work a lot better if it didn't immediately go into physical description (often using clichés), emotional description, then backstory info-dump. Every single time. “And unfortunately, the dialogue does not fair much better! It is very stilted and full of exclamation points! And lots of repetition!”
This was a good idea, I think, with poor execution. My eyes glazed over as I scrolled through info-dump after info-dump, and I finally gave up at 14% (couldn't even make it to my goal of 15% before making a DNF decision). I only read that long to get some inkling of what this supposed 'monster' was. Nothing that enticed me to read further, I'm sad to say.
I tried really hard to get into this book, and then I tried really hard to stay there. I mean, I really tried. I even kept going after “gorgeous hunk of manhood”, for crying out loud - though to be fair, I knew I should have stopped right there.
I usually give up after multiple typos and grammatical errors, but the story initially hooked me. We start with a scene of a girl running off, her last memory of her camp being Daddy's ax dripping with blood. Okay, great hook. It gets a bit muddy as the girl is terrified of whatever 'monster' her mom said was out there. Which isn't a smart idea from a parental viewpoint, and also from a writing viewpoint. Please don't string the reader along for three or four chapters before you start clarifying whatever Mom's Monster is. Especially when Mom is a viewpoint character and if she knows, we should know.
But Mom is not the only viewpoint character. The book hops around from character to character, which would work a lot better if it didn't immediately go into physical description (often using clichés), emotional description, then backstory info-dump. Every single time. “And unfortunately, the dialogue does not fair much better! It is very stilted and full of exclamation points! And lots of repetition!”
This was a good idea, I think, with poor execution. My eyes glazed over as I scrolled through info-dump after info-dump, and I finally gave up at 14% (couldn't even make it to my goal of 15% before making a DNF decision). I only read that long to get some inkling of what this supposed 'monster' was. Nothing that enticed me to read further, I'm sad to say.