Face Off
Crime, Mystery
Brenda Novak
Evelyn Talbot Chronicles, Book # 3
Headline
August 28th 2018
Paperback
416
English
February 20, 2021 February 23, 2021
Beat the Backlist, Cloak and Dagger, Finishing The Series, The Backlist Reader, Virtual Mount TBR
Tortured and left for dead at sixteen, Evelyn Talbot turned her personal nightmare into her life’s work—studying the disturbing psychopathy of some of the world’s most vicious serial killers. Now a leading psychiatrist at Hanover House in a small Alaskan town, she tries to believe the past will never come back to haunt her—until a woman goes missing from a cabin nearby, and every clue points to the man who once brutalized her…
As her boyfriend, who is the area’s only police, begins to investigate—and finds not one but two bodies—Evelyn can’t forget that her would-be killer, Jasper Moore, was never caught. But there are no new faces in tiny Hilltop, no one who seems suspicious or potentially violent. In this twisted game of cat and mouse, Evelyn is certain of only one thing—Jasper must be hiding in plain sight. And if she can’t find him before he comes for her, she won’t be lucky enough to survive twice…
About the book
Third book in the Brenda Novak series set in Alaska. Eight months have passed since the last book in which Evelyn, for the umpteenth time, was attacked because of her job, but fortunately she was saved by her new guard. Now she would like to have a child with Amarok, but the baby doesn’t arrive. Meanwhile, a tourist disappears and fear returns to Hilltop and many, including Amarok’s ex, blame Evelyn and Hanover House, the psychiatric clinic where she works in which the most dangerous criminals are locked up.
Attention, being the third book, in this review you will find some things happened in the previous books.
What I think
First of all, the Italian translator has finally changed. Perhaps they realised that the previous one didn’t know Italian. Anyway, Evelyn starts to get annoying and when that happens to me it’s serious, because it means that I start not dislike the series. I must say that at the beginning I gave 4 stars to this book, even if they were 4 – -, but the more I write this review the more I understand that I have been too kind and therefore I have lowered them to 3 and I do not regret it.
There are facts that I find absurd like realising that they could analyse Jasper’s DNA and compare it with his parents only now. It seems like the readers pointed this out to Brenda so she put it in the third book, eight months after the fact.
Lower 48 is a term that should have been there from the start. Now I don’t know if it’s a translation problem or Brenda didn’t put it in the first 2.5 books, but it seems like a term randomly placed there when it wasn’t there before.
The book is too repetitive. It repeats ad nauseam, of Evelyn’s hesitations and her story, of the previous months, of what happened when she was 16 without giving new details and then Evelyn wonders why her studies aren’t improving? Geez, I wander why! It seems to me that she is tired of being in Alaska but above all of her work.
And then there is a fact. Amarok is in prison asking questions. Someone passes him a cup of coffee and he takes it with his right hand while he is shaking hands with all the guards. He arrives at the last and gives him the left. All this can be better understood by reading the book, but when does one ever offer his left hand if his right is occupied by a cup of coffee? Usually you move the cup to the left and give the right, everywhere. Of course there is a reason for writing this madness, but it is useless. First of all because it is absurd (no one gives its left hand unless that hand is hurt) and secondly because it solves nothing. (Honestly, I took it as just a way to lengthen the book because frankly it doesn’t really happen that much in the whole plot.)
There were two new plots: the visit of Evelyn’s sister and the arrival of a female prisoner. Despite these two novelties, the book was still boring because the sister appeared a few seconds even if her story (in Alaska, not what happened in Boston) is perhaps the only appreciable thing about the book. And the femake prisoner appeared even less, perhaps it’s just an introduction to the next book. Be that as it may, as for Bishop in the previous book, here too, there is little developement despite the time and space there was (instead of repeating certain things ad nauseam the author could very well develop this new story more).
Characters
As said and reiterated (since I also had this feeling in the previous book) Evelyn is starting to get boring. Her indecision is ridiculous, you want one thing or you want the other, you can’t have both so decide already! Honestly, you can see that Brenda writes romance because there is more romance in this book than investigation. And then she (Evelyn) reiterates things a thousand times! How many times does she say she wants to go back to Boston? and how many does she say she loves Amarok? Honestly, I’m sick of reading the same things all the times. Furthermore, making her constantly suffer the madness of serial killers is too much. She has already suffered too much.
I still like Amarok even though, if I were him, I would leave Evelyn right now. But since she’s unbearable to me, maybe I can’t understand what he feels about her.
Conclusion
I’m sorry this series enjoyment has dropped so much because the first book was great but the repetitions, the push and pull and Evelyn herself, made it boring. In the end I found myself skimming through, which I never do and when it happens it’s because I’m bored. And I must say that this feeling lasted the whole book because I often found myself, even before the middle of the book, want to go to the end to see the ending.
I’m glad a chapter of Evelyn’s story is over, can we go back to studying psychopaths now please? I don’t know what will happen in the fourth book but if it is not available in my library I don’t think I will buy it. nope, certainly not spending money on it.
