BOOK REVIEW : WITNESS TO DEATH BY HEATHER GRAHAM

TITLE : Witness To Death

AUTHOR : Heather Graham

GENRE : Mystery, Thriller, Romantic Suspense

FR RATING : 1 Star

EXPECTED PUBLICATION : 28th April 2020

SYNOPSIS

Lorna Doria hadn’t committed a murder. She’d seen one. Yet somehow she’d become the prisoner, while the killer was out on bail. As state’s witness, she’d thought the shelter of her quiet New England life would be enough to keep her safe. Law enforcement disagreed—and it was New York City undercover cop Andrew Trudeau’s job to protect her. But their strong attraction had already made it too late for that . . .

Now, with Andrew as her bodyguard, Lorna has no choice but to accept his constant presence. She assures herself she can handle it, she’s mature, not easily rattled—except by Andrew. They’re as different as can be, yet something bonds them, something beyond the danger they face. But as a cop, Andrew’s life will always be on the line, and Lorna must decide whether she can live with that—if a killer lets them have any future at all . . . 

FR REVIEW

DISCLAIMER : Thank you Netgalley for providing me with an ARC of this book. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I read the synopsis and really liked the idea and so I requested this book. The story is about Lorna who after witnessing a murder has to go under police protection to avoid being silenced by the murderer. She meets Andrew who works as an undercover cop. He has been working on the case for some time. His brother’s wife gets murdered by the same criminal and now things have turned personal. The whole story is of Lorna and Andrew basically staying low and trying to figure out a way to take out the criminal.

After starting it I realized that the book was written in a way where the story jumped from places to places in the storyline with no reference to the time passed and it did not help in fully grasp the situation. The book is romantic suspense as I already mentioned based on a woman going into protective custody to safeguard from being killed by the person she has to testify against for murders. The premise was interesting and though there were situations that were meant to be high stakes and dangerous the heroine kept making bad decisions and simply annoying and gets herself into more trouble. Both the hero and heroine were acting like immature people rather than adults. I was confused and was not really interested in the writing style, but I continued on, hoping things would get better.

The main characters were constantly at each other’s throats and not in a cute way either. I did not care about their romance nor was I interested in the plot or the direction of it when I got halfway through the story. For romantic suspense, the romance seemed fully formed from a physical(sexual) standpoint without much emotional connection or good interactions. There was no banter but there were lots of hate-filled fights calling each other names. I just did not care for either of them. The characters did not seem to have any layers, just on the outside seemed to be very different from one another. They were made to fit the stereotypical molds and the hate-love trope was more of hate-to-lust than love in my opinion. There was no emotional bonding or angst to keep us engaged with the characters. Putting in events here and there without any context and adding characters without background work simply set the whole story to a colossal failure. The pacing was off and the plot did not make sense. There was no excitement or mystery to the whole book.

Overall how the characters were connected to one another was mentioned without much background work and people kept popping at different times. The interactions and friendships looked very weird. I also found out that the book is a re-publication of an older release and that could be one of the reasons for the way the set up for the book ad characters were established. I did not like it at all and I had to push through to finish the book and I feel really bad in giving it 1 star as well.

Summarising everything the book was a miss for me in terms of dialogue, character work, plot execution, plot development, and conclusion. All I can say is it wasn’t for me. I have seen some good reviews for this book and some bad reviews for this one. If you love insta-lust/love story you might like it, but again I highly doubt it.