In The Dark by Sally Eggert

In The Dark
by Sally Eggert
Rating: 2 of 5 stars

My Review:
Sad to say, I just couldn't read this whole book. It dragged and dragged and dragged. I knew within 30 pages who was the good guy and the bad guy. And I was so upset that the heroine asked no questions and really didn't care about finding out anything. She was simply Too Stupid To Live, in my mind. I felt like I read for ages and was only 17% through the book.

I liked the writing enough that I couldn't just leave the story altogether, so I skimmed a lot and read the last 30 pages too. I felt the descriptions and mullings went on for a really long time without anything interesting happening. As I skimmed, I'd find pages and pages where the heroine doesn't speak with anyone and seemingly just ruminates on how she really doesn't want to be a part of life. Not that she was exactly depressed (or maybe she was), but everyone fit into a spot in her head and she didn't care to find out if her assumptions were correct.

Josie just floats along, not wanting anything too hard. In her head, she just doesn't want to deal with anything serious in life. I could understand some of it to start with. She can barely handle that Johnny might be anything other than a sex buddy. She's so closed off - no friends, no family, no ties at all. Do your job, keep your head down, don't look up or look around. The descriptions show this. It seemed like no names, faces, no distinguishing features to pretty much anything.

But that part wasn't what bothered me. It's when she gets the shot of adrenaline that she can't look the other way anymore, so she calls the guy on the business card (ba-du-dum). She seems so wishy-washy to me. She really feels strong and like she belongs when she's working at the bar, but as soon as there's the possibility that a “big, important guy” could just take care of her, she's ready to jump on it even if she doesn't know anything about him. I wanted to shout at Josie “why would you trust this guy just because he said he worked in the same building?” It's like she says I'll just call him up and turn in whatever I can to him with no verification or anything. Why would you be that trusting of “the agency” still? The agency almost got her killed and yet as soon as anything comes up, she's still willing to do whatever. PTSD be damned, she'll put up with whatever she has to.

We're never in anyone else's head to get a different perspective on events, so the whole time when I'm thinking uh-oh, spooky music, why would you go into the house by yourself, poor stupid horror flick bimbo?! thoughts, there's no other balancing view points.

I don't often read romantic suspense, so I don't know if this is normal, but it was all so confusing to me. Nothing is really named or out in the open. I mean, I knew who the bad guy was right away, and the good guy was too vaguely good to really be bad. But the company is just “the agency”, no word on what it actually does. No clear information about why she was almost killed, just her boyfriend was asked to give up the names and he refused.

I'm sure there would be people that would like this book. I would guess a lot of the elements are par-for-the-course of romantic suspense. But it just didn't do it for me. If it weren't for the Too Stupid To Live factor, I probably would have read the whole thing, because I enjoyed the writing style. But I guess romantic suspense is probably not my genre for now.

I received a complementary ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.