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Title: Gratuitously violent and too taken with one's own cleverness.
Review: I'm with the review by Eileen Duncan on this one. While the author did occasionally show some flair for writing witty sentences and funny descriptive phrases, I found all of the characters unbelievable and unsympathetic, and their motivations completely unconvincing. The real teller of how self-consciously congratulatory this book is appears at the back, where the edition I read actually had readers' group's discussion questions included! REALLY? For something as shallow and frivolous as this debut novel, soaked in blood and gruesomeness? And of course, all this horrible stuff happens to her while her husband is away and unreachable (hence the placing of the action in the pre-cell phone days!), and no one thinks to have the heroine go stay with someone to keep her safe? Or to accompany her when she places herself in ridiculously dangerous situations for no reason? Self-indulgent, indeed.
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