"No two persons ever read the same book"
Edmund Wilson

Monday, 23 November 2015

I'm Watching You - Karen Rose

After a Picoult overdose I plucked Karen Rose off the shelf and decided to read a nice solid crime novel for a change. Kristen Mayhew is the star of this one, a public defender who takes any courtroom loss very personally, Kristen is lonely and closed off after being raped in college. Kristen however is being watched very carefully by a calculated killer who is delivering Kristen pictures and evidence of his murders, with a twist, he’s only going after criminals who escaped justice and most of them are Kristen’s own losses. He starts with a couple of sexual deviants and three gang members and escalates to killing people who haven’t been tried, but that he stills views as guilty. Handily delivering Kristen evidence of his crimes and burial sites and also offering her some interior decoration tips. He’s your average psycho vigilante.

Enter super cop, Abe Reagan, descending from a family of law enforcement he is super hunky and has eyes for only one woman, Kristen. Kristen is playing ice queen and Abe’s partner Mia is doing most of the work in trying to find the killer before he’s killed enough criminals to make a football team. Abes family adopt Kristen pretty quickly and soon she is shacked up with hunky cop and they are working out decades of issues together and sometimes trying to solve the crime. Kristen is also being targeted by gang members who are pissed to lose three of their own and think Kristen knows who is behind it and then she starts getting threats from the super creepy father of Angelo, who is a murderer who escaped justice and becomes a murderee to the super bad vigilante. You with me so far? Then there is reporter Zoe who needs a big break so she can make it to CNN and thinks a few murders will get her to the top, aswell as sleeping with literally anyone who can give her an exclusive. She has this crazy hatred of Kristen which is literally never explained.
The crime itself is really interesting, the murders, the clues, the pool of suspects keep you reading. I narrowed it down to three people and I was right on one of them.
However my only criticism is this, I went into the novel not realising Karen Rose writes “Romantic suspenseful” novels and honestly by the end of the book I was tired of the cringetastic sex scenes and clichéd conversations between hunkysupercop and Kristen.
I liked Kristen as a character though, she was pretty tough, interesting and easy to read about.

Three out of five, I loved the plot and feel of the novel but the romance was too over played and took away from Roses true talent as a crime author.

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