Sweetheart by Chelsea Cain (2008, Hardcover)

***I got an advance read copy of this novel, thus the printing of a review before the release date. I did read the novel, unfortunately.***

I read, and did not enjoy, Heartsick, the first book in this series. Cain's 2nd attempt here is not any better than I found the first to be. The story is uninvolving, lacking in creative story-telling and descriptions and wanting for suspense and mystery. It is an unfortunate attempt at a female Hannibal Lecter and it fails miserably.

To top this off, Cain, who is from Oregon, relies too heavily on her knowledge of the area and still can't describe a place effectively enough for me to truly picture it in my mind. She's in trouble if she strays from her home and tries to describe places she knows less well.

The story meanders aimlessly with no real rhyme or reason to the chapters. It seems like a book that was written free-thought, from start to finish. Pointless thoughts, meaningless descriptions, or un-necessary discussions pop up throughout the story. Several times, I had to go back and re-read 2 or 3 chapters thinking, "I must have missed something", but no, it was just an obscure and pointless reference to something that did not apply to the subject at hand and never panned out in the story as a whole.

None of the characters, after 2 novels, have become any more real. They are one-dimensional, cardboard, milquetoast or just downright boring. Names mean nothing because the characters have no personality that jumps from the pages and makes you remember them.

The story is contrived and predictable. The outcome is so far out of left field that no one will see it coming, but that doesn't make it a good ending. Nothing set up in the book leads to what the reader arrives at after several hundred pages. Mystery is absent, suspense is thin and character development is weak at best. The prose is dry and boring. There is no flair in the writer's style, no special something that makes her writing meaningful or memorable.

This book actually tries to get away from the Gretchen Lowell story-line with a contrived political cover-up, but the concept is ridiculous and the ending is really hard to swallow. Fiction or not, this is not supposed to be a fantasy novel and the ending was just a bit too much to be believable. The ending falls in to place a little too conveniently. And, to top it off, some people who had none, somehow end up with a conscience at the end of the book. It's just a little too absurd for me.

I can't see mysellf reading any future efforts by this author; her style is uninteresting, her descriptions of people, place and things, too cliche (how many time does one need to know exactly how blue reporter Susan Ward's hair is before we get the point?). The first was a "gimme" for the writer, the second a mistake for me; I'll use a cliche to follow up on this cliche of a novel: fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. I won't be fooled by this author again.

The 3 stars I offer is kind. I should rate this a 2 but, as a writer myself, I will give Cain the 3 for the effort as I know writing a novel is difficult.