Lisa Jackson used to be one of my favorite authors. USED to be. I'd taken a break from reading her books, I had found some new authors I was interested in, and finally purchased some of Lisa's books that I hadn't read. I'm quite saddened to see the downgrade in her writing. The stories used to be really good, a nice mix of romance and suspense, which I liked. This book did have a healthy mix of it, but it leaned more towards the suspense side of the game, which didn't bother me one bit. The storyline was still interesting, but the inconsistencies in the storytelling really detracted from the good parts. And I'm quite sick of Alverez and her "damned" cold/flu/sniffles/whatever. Enough already.
The reason why I am so irritated (and I NEVER write reviews, but this situation had me mighty heated, so I needed to share my piece!) was because of the ridiculous inconsistencies in the book, the major one being the constant reference to the copycat killer, the "woman apprehended in Spokane"...it's referenced about a thousand and one times, so it's a pretty major point. I read the first book in this series, Left to Die, and at the climactic ending (if you've read it...), you can remember that Falda was the copycat and she was hit over the head with a crutch during the struggle with Jillian and died. She was so dead that Lisa Jackson had to drive the point home by repeating her death with "he held his wife's corpse" and "cradling his dead wife". Point taken - she's dead! So why in hell is she "in custody" in Spokane? I don't think it's legal to arrest a corpse (haha). And it's repeated, over and over - the news people leave Grizzly Falls to go to Spokane, someone from the Grizzly Falls PD goes there to check the suspect, and they keep going back to the "suspect in Spokane". I am not normally so nitpicky with errors, we all make them, but this one was quite a huge error. There was a minor inconsistency in the first book that got my goat, which was when Bianca was described as being dark haired, blue eyed, slightly Mediterranean, but a few pages afterwards, she had light brown eyes and red hair. (Not to mention the car in the first book...a Ford "Eclipse". Yeah, OK.) That was fairly minor, but this copycat error is quite a large oversight. So now when I'm reading this book, I can't get a clear picture of Bianca in my head and I keep thinking about the apprehension in Spokane, wondering why they handcuffed a dead woman (o:
Long story short, Ms. Jackson needs to hire a new team of proofreaders and editors. If you want your fans to continue to read your works and take you seriously as an author, these mistakes need to be fixed prior to publishing instead of having the readers write heated reviews. If it takes a little longer to get the new book out to fans, so be it. I'd rather wait a little longer than have stories that are supposed to tie together, but don't make a lick o' sense because backstories are incorrect in the next book. I still have to get through the last 2 books of the series but with the way the first 2 went, I don't know if I'm going to be a happy camper while slogging through them.