The Unexpected by JAJ

When Hamilton's wealthy mother is suddenly killed in a plane crash, the initial theory of an accident doesn't sit well with him-in fact, he starts to believe his father and Mrs Davis, the woman who has been like a mother to him his whole life, had something to do with it.

As required by FTC, I received a complimentary copy of The Unexpected by JAJ as a member of the Dorrance Publishing Book Review Team. Visit dorrancebookstore.com to learn how you can become a member of the Book Review Team.

I chose this book to review as the synopsis sounded very interesting and I thought what a great idea for a story.  I was right, it was a great idea for a story and really had so much potential.  It had a few characters who were all necessary to move the story along, it had the intrigue of a secret, it had the unexpected twist and it had an unexpected ending(or so you thought) but somehow the author just did not do this justice.

To start, it was far to short.  At only 60 pages long it is more a short story than a novel but without the snappiness of a  short story.  Given the subject matter this had the meat for a significant sized novel and would have been great had the author added more suspense to it.

What he did was just tell the story as if it was just a story guide he had written and then meant to go back and add some meat to it later to make a proper novel.  To me it was more like a book of notes that the author had put together outlining the story he meant to write.

The tone used was also very formal.  The dialogue did not flow smoothly in a normal speech pattern but it was stiff and stinted in a way that one would write if they were desperately trying to get the grammar correct and write a conversation in full without taking account that people, even formal ones, tend to speak in a flowing almost informal way.  In short, the writing of the dialogue felt forced.

Another minor gripe was the cover (see picture above) it did not match the story in subject or era and it gave the book a very amateur feel about it.

Such a shame as this had so much potential but I can truly only give it a 2 out of 5.


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