Flame

Title: Flame

Author: Tara Heavey

Published: July 7, 2017 by Tara Heavey

Purchased: I voluntarily read and reviewed a complimentary copy of this book, $3.99 on Kindle.

☆/5

Blurb: Single mother Rachel and young son Ember are on the run from something – or is it someone? – dark and threatening. They hope that they are running towards a better life, but can they escape their past and create the future they long for and deserve, in the heart of the Irish countryside? And perhaps find healing in the magical landscape itself?  Maybe.With the help and romantic attentions of Ben the solitary woodsman and the surprising friendship of Madame Cyn, the outrageous cafe-owner. Not to mention a ghostly presence from the past and the sudden appearance of an orphaned fox cub … Through it all, can the flame of hope and love be kept alive?

Review: This just seems like it’s trying much too hard to be poetic. It’s taking away from the story and really making me not want to read. I got to chapter 4 and I just had to stop. I just could not go on. So this is a DNF for me.

I feel like this would have been a decent book, not great but decent, had the writing been better and not trying so hard. Why do we need to know that this minor side character has wide matronly hips and breasts pointing at Rachel?

Also, the detail just made no sense to me. Turquoise streaks in the sky? If that’s supposed to be the Aurora Borealis then I feel like that’s the most insulting way that you can describe that beautiful, breath-taking even when everything else has been trying too hard to be poetic. You seem to try and put poetry into things that don’t need it but when something would actually benefit from it, you dumb it down?

The cover is pretty but that really seems like the only thing going for it. The title makes me worried about how the book would be and I was right. The story does not match the cover.

All in all, I would not recommend this book to anyone. Just seems to be trying too hard and yet not trying hard enough.

Thank you for reading my review.