A special thanks goes out to James T. Wood for being my first patreon supporter. I'm sorry about the delay of your recognition. I'm still learning how to use the patreon page. Again, my deepest thanks for helping me to buy books. I bought my share of them this week. I have a book to review, but it took reading the first few chapters of three other books before I got to this one.
Maybe I should make that my secret Patreon subscriber reward...I'll tell you the names of the books I didn't like. I've said before that I'm trying to make this a positive podcast where I tell you about why I like the book I'm reviewing this week, rather than telling you what I didn't like about the books I gave up on. I mean really, you don't want to listen to a half hour of a book that you won't want to read after I'm done giving it a negative review.
So. the three books I passed on, one I didn't like because the first fifteen pages was just telling the reader about the cute reasons why each of the characters had their given nickname. No plot. No conflict in fifteen pages, just story background. That doesn't work for me.
The second book was just boring and the third had constant unexpected point of view switches. You might call it omniscient view point, I call it confusing and frustrating.
Anyway, enough about what I don't like.
This week I'm going to talk about Dark Creations: Gabriel Rising by Jennifer and Christopher Martucci. They have a ton of books out, and this book is the first of six in a paranormal romance. It was first published in December of 2013. It has 4 out of 5 stars on 263 reviews. It only has 140 pages in the first book, but I just picked up a set of the first 3 on Kindle for free.
Here is the cover copy:
When Gabriel James mysteriously appears in seventeen-year-old Melissa Martin’s English class, she is not prepared for what she experiences, how she feels the first time they speak. With otherworldly attractiveness, gallantry, charm and intelligence, he is everything boys her age are not.
But Gabriel has a secret, a dark secret.
His secret threatens to rip them apart and unleash an evil on the world so horrific, humanity will be forever changed.
In this deeply romantic and captivating young adult paranormal romance novel, Gabriel and Melissa will risk everything – their very lives – to guard their love. Together, they will be forced to confront mankind’s darkest creation.
The Amazon preview has the prolog and most of the first chapter. I'm going to read you everything they gave:
(Read the chapters)
So, this is where the Amazon preview ends. The chapter goes for another few pages, so I know what happens next.
What do you think it will be?
Will this Gabriel mentioned in the cover copy be there to intervene?
What was the yellow eyed beast in the prolog? Was that Gabriel, or something else?
Is that monster waiting at Melissa's home to great her?
There were allusions to the prolog in the first chapter, the unusual darkness, the strange wind. What did it mean?
I like the way the authors set up the conflicts.
I always say that good thrillers take smart characters making dumb choices. I like Melissa's character. She's obviously a smart young woman, and I know we've been told that her friend talked he into going out with Kevin. She should have bailed on him as soon as he insisted on going to the Rec center. But then we wouldn't have had any of the fun conflict about shutting him down in the car. Plus, I give Kevin better than even odds that he will turn up dead some time very soon. (I haven't read that far. This is just my speculation.)
You haven't met the father yet, but I have, and I think he's a little over the top when it comes to protectiveness. But then again, there isn't a lot of conflict if he's understanding and settles with "lesson learned" about Kevin.
One thing about the authors' writing style that I find distracting is the avoidance of contractions. I know there are regions of the US, like in New York and around there where they don't use contractions. Maybe this is a regional characteristic of the authors. I have a friend from New York who writes like that and we've had to learn to agree to disagree when critiquing each others writing. To me it make everything sound too emphatic.
Anyway, I give Dark Creations a strong recommendation to read further. It looks like a thrilling ride.