Title: Obsession Falls
Author: Christina Dodd
Series: Virtue Falls #2
good kind of weird. more thriller than romance. pain and insanity in many forms…
Where. To. Start.
Before Virtue Falls last year, I hadn’t read a Dodd novel for several years. She had a period where she published novellas that weren’t printed and reissues of old books that I already own and have read, and since I don’t have an ereader and don’t really like sitting at my computer for hours reading an ebook (epic headache), she fell off my radar for a long time. Then she popped back up with a little blip called Virtue Falls, which I snatched up with avidity and zipped through so fast I honestly don’t remember much of it. But I remember that it did not have such a dark tone as this one.
This book started off with a tentative “okay…” and ended on a completely bemused “wtf?” But it was good, I did like it, I enjoyed reading it and watching events unfold… But it was weird. An I-respect-you-for-being-weird kind of weird. I’m going to be using that word a lot.
The plot could be boiled down to run-of-the-mill revenge, but healthy doses of peril, intrigue, and insanity–and at times a little bit of outrageousness that warranted a disbelieving chuckle from me–kept it fresh. In a sentence, a woman gets caught up in a deadly game of revenge between old college buddies. Old hat, right? No. The woman gets involved by witnessing the commencement of the villain’s revenge plot, and she’s so scared for her life that she allows the world to believe her dead and lives in the wilderness for some time, which pretty much drives her insane, but you don’t realize that until the end. Or at least I didn’t, not fully. She slowly reenters civilization over the next year after she discovers that her experience in the wilderness gave her a make-under, so no one recognizes her (except one old man, although his doing so was pointless). When she feels secure and competent, she contacts the one man who she thinks might believe her witness account, and then it all goes downhill from there, progression-wise. He comes, they team up and tangle with the villain, who dies–maybe?–and they come out alive and victorious.
Firstly, I haven’t checked how she marketed this book, but she’s been primarily–only, to my knowledge–romance in the past, so I assume that’s how it was advertised. But it wasn’t a romance novel. Not foremost, anyway. Foremost, it was a thriller. Pure thriller. The hero and heroine didn’t even meet until halfway through, and they never really fell in love. He convinced himself that his obsession with a woman he’d never met had turned into love, which I never bought, and she had her head so far up her own *ss she didn’t know crazy from normal. Their “romance” was rocky, sudden, mistrustful, and weird. Almost painful to read, actually–which may well have been Dodd’s aim. This book was all about pain.
And, and! There was no sex scene! Wth? They were alluded to, but never described in present time. Which is very un-Dodd-like. Very. She’s always stuck out in my mind as one of the more graphic, erotic romance authors, but not this time. Totally cements the thriller-not-romance thing.
Dodd has a writing tip on her website that says something along the lines of “Imagine the worst thing that could happen to your character…and make it happen.” An excellent concept, one I believe she employs in this book. But I prefer to use that tip while brainstorming plot ideas–just ideas, from which I can glean elements, twists, climaxes. I don’t actually want the worst thing possible to happen to my characters, and I really don’t want to watch characters go through it in a romance novel. Don’t get me wrong–everyone needs trials and tribulations to make a story interesting and meaningful–but while some people might like reading about awful things happening, I sure as heck don’t. In fact, that is the last thing I want to read about in my ROMANTIC. FICTION. (Total thriller!) So–danger, yes. Adrenaline rushes, yes. Ruthless brutality, graphic mutilation, not so much. Death, never (unless it’s the villain, then it’s usually okay).
But I’m digressing. The setting was great! I dream about traveling and touring the western corner of the US, so that was fantastic, beautifully described. I’ve never been to a coast, so my mental image was only from movies, but I still think it was beautiful–and Dodd was good at illustrating the deadly potential within the beauty of the landscape. Brilliant.
The main character is Taylor Summers, later known as Summer…Something. I didn’t really get a good feel for her pre-clusterf*ck, but I think the gist was malcontent coward with no self-respect? But then her life went to heck, she cheats death several times, gets smarter–or at least ballsier. I have to say, I was disappointed with how she turned out at the end. We watch her buck up and grow resilient as she consistently achieves her only goal–survive–but it’s not a good, respectable strength she finds. It’s a ruthless strength that disguises her mental breakdown and resultant imbalance. By the end, I don’t feel like I’m looking at a woman who became better, stronger, more self-aware and more self-respectful. I was looking at a woman who did what she had to to survive, and in doing so became paranoid, mistrustful, self-serving, and rather obsessed with unhealthy things. Such as crazy, murderous villains. Understandable from a starkly realistic, PTSD standpoint, but not endearing in a romance heroine. Her being an artist was just plain convenient, which rather disgusted me. 1. She could draw the crimes and criminals she witnessed, always handy. 2. The signed sketches she had with her identified her when she would have wished to remain anonymous. Bummer.
Everyone else had supportive roles. Kennedy, the love interest, was equally as batsh*t as Summer and Jimmy, the villain. I did not like Kennedy, which is crappy, because aren’t we supposed to fall in love with the hero? I just thought he was weird and a little creepy. And a jerk. And I couldn’t get a handle on his personality. Nerd? Warrior? Businessman? IT guy? Crazy person? Romantic sot? Emotionally constipated? All of the above, apparently. Jimmy was a fascinating villain, but his motivations seemed to oscillate, which was confusing.
And then there was the whole RPG-come-to-life thing, which was fascinating, I loved it…but I wish somehow the book could have been structured in a way that incorporated the “game” throughout the entirety, and not just the third act. I feel like there was untapped potential for that angle.
There were some loose ends that I don’t appreciate. Some people like a good cliff-hanger, but I loathe them. I need closure. Good for driving sales, but not good for my mental state. Some logic didn’t compute, either, but hey, it’s fiction. I can go along with it. But 1. What the heck happened in that two years between the climax and the epilogue (though she says it’s a chapter)? Did she get her reputation back? How did the world react when these events came to light, not to mention the fact that she isn’t dead or a (major) criminal? Did she b*tch-slap her mom? Go on Dr. Phil? What happened to Tabitha and Miles? Did Maggie live? Does Summer still hallucinate about her father? Is her PTSD still at full throttle? Can she please say something to acknowledge that she still finds Kennedy handsome despite his scarred, beaten face? WHO SENT HER THE WINE!? Come on! Seriously? There had better be follow-up in the next one.
Speaking of more loose ends and the next book, I hope to heck that all that Kateri and the Coast Guard drama was set-up for Kateri and Luis’s story in the next book. Otherwise it was completely useless and time-consuming. I think it’ll be called Illusion Falls, saw it on her website, but I don’t know the plot.
It was just weird all around. Not at all what I expected from Christina Dodd. Actually, it reminds me of Nora Roberts’ last standalone in April. That one was very unlike her (Nora) too. Where Obsession Falls was more thriller than romance, The Liar was more woman’s fiction than romance. Same thing there, it was more about the female main character’s complex development than anything else, skimpy on the romance. What is going on, people?
But overall, I did like it, and I would recommend it to my friends. Have recommended it. So it was weird, but definitely worth checking out, because it is a well-written book for all that. 🙂
