Intricate Deceptions
Author: Jennifer Rayes
Genre: Romance, suspense, mystery
Release date: November 16th 2013
Waking up in a desolate cell, Gaia realizes that she has been kidnapped by a human trafficking organization, doomed to be sold to the highest bidder and unable to remember anything before her capture.
An opportune rescue by Raoul, the Prince of Kayamato, saves Gaia from a gruesome future, and she is thrown into a world of luxury and privilege. As she struggles to regain her memory, Gaia learns that her rescue was no accident and finds herself in even more danger, hunted by a powerful drug lord, targeted by a thrill seeking pirate, and betrayed by those she thought closest to her.
Fighting for sanity and survival, she works to unravel the truth behind her capture, each revelation more shocking than the last. The intricate web of deceptions spun around her family will shatter her world, leaving her unsure if she will ever trust again.
Through it all, she must survive to save a friend before it’s too late…
my review
I received a free copy for an honest review.
I accepted this ARC for review from the author because I saw potential in the story from what I read in the synopsis, and after I finished the book, I still stand by that statement.
More often than not, not-the-best (I’m not going to say bad right now) books are more likely to be caused by bad execution rather than actual bad ideas.
The weird thing about this book though, aside from how much potential the story itself held, is that I kept seeing glimpses of good writing techniques throughout the book. There were actually really good techniques used to build suspense and mystery throughout the book. For example, one thing I really liked was how the author used unnamed narratives so the reader knows what’s going on, but at the same time maintained the mystery and fear of who it actually is. That was really clever and it is good writing.
It really is a shame because the story itself was really interesting, but it really could’ve been executed better. I feel like I’m going to say this word a lot in this review (potential), but it’s because it really is an accurate word to describe this book. Everything about this book had so much protentional. It could’ve had an out-of-the-world world building (ha, get it?), superb story and an excellent romance. But it was unfortunately ruined by the bad executions, which are specifically the awkward dialogues as well as the pace.
These two are the main factors in this book that ruined the potential it originally held. There were so many bad dialogues, and even the acceptable ones could’ve been done way better. This book also has a really bad syndrome of “tell not show”, resulting it to ruin a lot of the original built up suspense.
In my opinion, this book was also pretty fast paced (especially in the begging), but not in a good way. It feels more rushed, and it mess up the story even more (because the book was already extremely underdeveloped), so rushing so much only made everything feel extremely shallow (and those cringy dialogues were not helping). Basically, you just get the feeling that the book only scraped the surface in every area, and did not truly develop in anything.
Gaia was fine. But her over-emotional attitude was kind of getting on my nerves. She gets attached to people, sad, angry, and happy so quickly, it feels like her emotions are being controlled by switches. Not to add on she officially falls into one of my absolute most hated tropes, and that is overly kind to-the-unrealistic-point heroines.
I’m not even going to talk about Gaia and Raoul’s. It’s instant love.
(That should be enough to summarize that part).
Yeah, basically to sum up, this book is a wasted potential. But the author definitely has potential herself, and it shows in the book. So I do encourage her to keep writing, but please, please work on your dialogues and the development in your story overall (especially the dialogues).
My Rating:
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jennifer Rayes is a Lebanese-American author, born in Michigan, and raised in the mountains of Lebanon. She is the creator of Intricate Deceptions and Intricate Intentions, books 1 and 2 of the Intricate Series. She is an avid reader and currently resides in the UAE with her Great Pyrenees, Koby.
