Review: Lost Reaper

Lost Reaper by Shelley Russell Nolan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is one of those reads that I decided upon because a friend had read and enjoyed it. I trust what my friends have to say about books, and due to this I was more than happy to give this one a read. In fact, I was rather eager as the whole notion of the book piqued my interested. Unfortunately, I couldn’t bring myself to love it as much as I’d been hoping to.

The book starts with a bang, pulling us straight into the storyline. Within pages, our main character dies and comes face-to-face with the Grim Reaper. Without going into too much detail, our main character ends up working for him – thus, she becomes a reaper. From there, however, things did not go as I’d anticipated. I expected a lot of action, a lot of supernatural elements; instead, it became a rather annoying romance story.

Our main character suffered a terrible breakup due to her boyfriend being a cheat. I could have dealt with this, had it not become such a main focus of the rest of the story. It seemed to me, as soon as the boyfriend was out of the picture our main character became a beacon for cliché male characters. You know how far too many romance novels contain the super-rich or police officers – well, this is another of those stories. In fact, it contains both. We have a cop and a man of money going after our main character. If you add in a solider and a cowboy, we would have had the top four types of men found in erotica stories. Hell, I kept expecting it to take a sudden turn down that route. Part of me thinks it would have been slightly more enjoyable had such a thing happened instead of all the meaningless drama that pulled away from the supernatural element of the story.

Okay, I feel as though I’m ranting, and for that I’m sorry. I simply feel as though this book fell short of the potential. This is due to the way the focus pulled away from what I was interested about on so many occasions. It wasn’t that the supernatural element completely disappeared – it was always there in the background – it simply seemed to take a backseat. I feel almost cheated, that I would have been happier had this been labelled as a romance rather than an urban fantasy read.

When it came to the rest of the story, I also felt a bit let down. I wanted more detail throughout, with things developing rather than everything being thrown in at the end. I felt as though there was too much information given in too short a time period. It seemed as though everything was thrown in at once. Whilst I accept many complicated aspects to any given story, I feel as though they weren’t given in the right way. It left it feeling forced, I felt as though it was too much for one story. Had this information been spread out I’m sure I would have enjoyed it a lot more than I did.

Then there is the mystery aspect. If you can call it a ‘mystery’. As a big fan of crime fiction, I never expect the endless twists and turns I see in crime fiction books to appear in fantasy books that merely have the crime as a smaller aspect of the story. Despite this, I couldn’t help but grow annoyed at the characters. Things were far too obvious. I know it was supposed to build up suspense with the incorrect information, with all the suspects, yet it bugged me. From pretty much the start, you knew who was to blame.

Despite this, it was interesting enough. There is potential for the rest of the series to go in many directions, and if done correctly it will make up for this book. It could have pulled me in, it simply didn’t go about telling the story in the right way for me to become addicted in the way I had hoped to be.

Overall, it wasn’t quite what I had hoped for. As it stands, I’m unsure as to whether I’ll give the second book a read. Only time will tell, I guess.

As a final note, I’d like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this.

View all my reviews