Rating: 2/5
Review:
hard going
In the end I’m afraid I found To The Lions pretty hard going.
Holly Watt is a fine investigative journalist, but doesn’t really
manage to make the transition from journalism to fiction.
It begins very well
as Casey (an investigative journalist) overhears something very
disturbing while in a nightclub following another story and decides
to follow it up. Watt is excellent in her descriptions of the
process of investigative journalism and I was very involved as the
process began. However, other aspects of the book were far less
successful and, sadly, crammed with cliché both in the story and
often in the prose – something I would expect an experienced
journalist to avoid like the plague. :o) Things began to go wrong
for me when Casey’s love interest becomes involved, which I found
thoroughly unconvincing both in content and description. At around
the same time, the book starts to get bogged down in worthy
journalistic exposition. Watt makes very serious and important
points...but she doesn’t really do it as a novelist and it doesn’t
make good reading.
I found myself less
and less involved. I wasn’t convinced by any aspect of the
storytelling and found the style increasingly off-putting. It’s a
pity after a promising start, but this one wasn’t for me.
(My thanks to Raven
Books for an ARC via NetGalley.)
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