J Taylor

A middle aged woman arrives at a private detective’s office for her appointment (I couldn’t find out why) and finds herself mixed up in the kidnapping of a rich families son. Bundled into the boot of a car she is soon fearing for her life and that of the hostage when she meets him. A little overweight and not as fit as she used to be (sounds a bit like myself), she endeavours to escape and get help in a clumsy attempt of heroism.
At times humorous, and at others absolutely unbelievable, show more she eventually saves the day (and the boy).
Overall, an enjoyable read for everyone who is not terribly fussed about a riveting story line. show less

When Susie Andrews shows up for her scheduled appointment at a private investigator’s office, she finds herself held at gunpoint. Pulled into the kidnapping of a young man, she has to rely on her wits to make sure he gets home safely.
I’ll say this up front, this book will not make my favourites of the year list. Right from the beginning I was wondering if the writing was trying to be funny, or dramatic. I would have been fine with the switch between first person and third person show more narration, if it had followed a predicable pattern. But switches between styles of narration seemed somewhat random at times, even jumping between characters, sometimes for only one paragraph. It left me disorientated at times.
All that could have been remedies by a good story, but sadly it wasn’t. The plot wore a little thin several times, and got less and less believable as the story went on. There was little suspense, as everything that wasn’t obvious from the start got revealed rather quickly. Several summaries by characters telling others what had happened before slowed everything down. There was a somewhat surprising twist at the end, but I’d file that under not really credible rather an anything else. show less

The overweight main character reminds me of myself and the situations I sometimes get myself into on a regular basis. The plot was good, a little jumpy but easy enough to follow. It's a bit hard to stay focused but the end does have a plot twist that's a bit unique. Overall, a good easy read.

A little bit of promise in the protagonists scenes, but not yet ready for publication, needs substantial re-writing in places, re-formatting, and heavy editing. I made it about a third of the way through and gave up, life's too short to read bad books. It's possible it all comes together in an exciting finish, but I couldn't make it that far, and on form it was instead heading towards boringly predictable.

Our unnamed protagonist, and out of condition lady, stumbles across a kidnapping when show more she visits a PI (purpose unstated), and ends up kidnapped herself. Her fellow hostage is the son of a nouveau-riche couple, the chap gold-digging into an older wife, and at the same time being exploited but other women seeking his riches. While the protagonist scenes were basically ok, all the antagonist viewpoints were very poor - a lot of telling rather than showing, and of that most of it was spite-filled prejudice against those richer and more successful than the author. Excising all of these segments may have made for a readable story.

In addition the formatting was terrible with line breaks occurring randomly every few sentences. Some of the actual prose was also in need of editing for grammar choices (if you're flashback to earlier memories these need to be in past tense) and also incorrect spelling choices and endings.

Don't bother. show less