TITLE:
SHADY DEALS
AUTHOR:
Cindy McDonald
Pages:
196
Date:
16/04/2014
Grade:
3.5
Details:
No. 5 The Unbridled Series
Received from Acorn Publishing
Own
/ Kindle
The
blurb:
“Hot
Romance Shaded in Lies and Murder!
Kate West and Dr. Holden Reese have put their troubled past behind them and are ready to set a wedding date. There;s only one thing in Holden's way: a powerful drug Lord at Keystone Downs Thoroughbred Race Track has Holden under his thumb, and he's not letting go!
Kate's family is determined to get to the bottom the of horse drugging ring, and when the West's get too close to the truth the Drug Lord sends them a brutal message that can't be misinterpreted. Now Holden is on the run, and he's dragging Kate with him.
Can he escape his indiscretions?
How long can he keep Kate in the dark?
And how damning will the truth be when it's finally revealed?”
-----------------------------------------------------------
My
thoughts:
I’m
not quite sure what I thought about this book. There were parts of it I loved
and parts of it that made me think ‘what the ....’.
The
story was interesting and had all the elements needed to make this a thrilling
read; a young couple in love, horses and a racetrack, a vet risking everything
through involvement with horse doping, gangsters, violence, men of honour,
kinky role-play... I don’t think I need to go on; this book was packed with
intrigue. And that is also my first issue with this story; there was too much
happening.
There
is Holden and Kate’s relationship which seems to be going well despite the fact
that he’s keeping secrets from her and putting her under enormous pressure to
set a wedding date. There is the pressure Holden is under from the drug lord
forcing him to provide prescriptions to drug the race horses. There is a new
jockey who’s not quite what he appears to be. When I ran into cruelty against a
horse I nearly discarded the book. And still the action continued; attempted
murder and Holden’s desperate need to get away without revealing to Kate why
they’re leaving without saying goodbye to anyone. I’m sure I missed one or two
things but you get the idea.
There
is so much happening in this book that reading it became exhausting at times. I’m
a huge fan of thrilling page-turners but even those need a pause for the reader
to catch their breath occasionally. The amount of characters and the frequent
shifts in perspective also made me (literally) lose the plot a few times. But,
I think I could have dealt with all of these issues if the writing had been a
little bit less brusque. The author didn’t seem to want to take the time to
develop anything. Thoughts and feelings of the characters were reduced to a
single paragraph. I couldn’t help feeling that the author begrudged having to
explain the characters’ motivation because it took away from the action. While
this may work very well for other readers, I love dissecting the characters in
my books and never got the feeling I got close to knowing or understanding
these people.
I
also had one or two issues with Kate. I mean it was hard enough to believe that
she wanted to marry a man who was obviously keeping secrets from her and had
also recently had an affair with another woman. But to have her think that if
she hadn’t been with Holden she could have fallen for Lugowski was a bit too
much.
After
all of that complaining, I should also admit that there were parts of this book
that worked very well. The scene in the stable when the gangster has two men
captive and is getting ready to kill them had me mesmerized and reading as fast
as I possibly could for example.
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