Title: Dead Girl Running
Author: Christina Dodd
Series: Cape Charade #1
What the hell is Dodd doing?
When I picked up this book for the first time a couple months ago, I intended to write a full review then but was so furious when I was done that I had to tuck it away and forget about it for the sake of my sanity. It haunted me, though, so I skimmed through it a second time, and, knowing its secrets, I saw what Dodd and Co. were trying to do…and whether or not they pulled it off is debatable. But it still pisses me off.
Once again, Dodd is trying to tell too many stories at once, and they all got mashed together and plopped onto the printed page like a scoop of mystery meat in a cafeteria. The Lykke plots, the Max plots, the Librarian plot, whatever was going on with Temo. I think, in the beginning, she wanted to tell the story of an amnesiac, and it all just spiraled downhill from there. She got ahead of herself, wanting to start in a certain place in Kellen’s—Cecelia’s—Whoever the Fuck’s life that she did what she wanted and filled in the gaps with flashbacks. “It’s intriguing,” she probably thought. “The reader will figure things out as Kellen does.”
*glares stonily*
She’s got four books planned for this series. I feel like she skipped the first and went straight to the second. I wish Dodd had put in the work to start at the real beginning instead of starting where she wanted to start and doing both the characters and the readers a disservice by using cliched devices like dreams and flashbacks. What’s wrong with a linear, streamlined plot? The Librarian plot was forgettable, unnecessary, uninspired, and had absolutely nothing to do with Kellen’s past aside from the ex-machina fact that the resort just happened to be owned by Max’s family. (The two plots of The Woman Who Couldn’t Scream were connected by a thread just as thin.) The Librarian plot was a needy brat tugging on my sleeve and chanting, “Care about me, care about me, care about me,” and I would distractedly hiss, “Shh, I’m busy,” because I was trying to focus on the Lykke and Max plots.
I both do and do not want to read the next book, which seems to pick up where this one left off. I want to see Kellen—Cecelia—WTF and Max and their daughter live happily ever after, but I’m just so furious with Dodd for writing it this way that I may protest on principle.
To be fair, I don’t know how the rest of the series goes, I don’t know if maybe this one will make more sense when considered within the big picture. Maybe, when my hindsight is 20/20, I’ll see this novel’s brilliance and eat crow. But as this one stands, as an independent novel, I despise it. I’d give it one star, but the second star represents my faith in Dodd and hope for the future. After all, I really did like the Lykke/Max plots, I just wish they’d been written differently.
