2 out of 4 stars
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Sins Unforgiven by J.G. Umbac is a crime and mystery novel about a young man named Jeff Landrom who goes into a coma after a car accident. He gets admitted to the hospital and is now under the watch of charge nurse, Terrie Lopez, who finds herself very protective of Jeff. While in a coma in the hospital, Jeff undergoes out of body experiences. While his body is physically in the bed, his mind projects outward and he can glide to wherever he wants to, see people, and witness actual conversations before blacking out and falling into the coma again.
As more and more details of Jeff’s car accident come to light, the police get involved and it becomes clear that the car accident was actually not an accident at all. Someone did try to kill Jeff, but was unsuccessful. Terrie Lopez works with the police to ensure Jeff’s safety and to report any new information. Jeff’s family, including his parents and his wife, do their best to care for Jeff and find his attempted killer.
I really liked the concept of this book. When I first read the blurb, I was highly intrigued. I thought the idea of a comatose patient using his out of body experiences to help the police piece together what happened on the night of the accident, was a really unique and interesting idea. Unfortunately it was poorly executed. There were numerous editing mistakes. Quotation marks were omitted when they were needed and vice versa. Past and present tenses were mixed up, and commas and apostrophes were misplaced.
This book involved way too much telling, and not enough showing. While I was reading the story, it felt like I was reading a letter from a friend telling me about past events. Usually when I read a book, I like to get involved in the storyline and create mental images of what the characters are doing and how they are feeling, but I didn’t get that from this book. The story did not flow like a novel. Also, the dialogue was completely unrealistic. The way the characters spoke to each other did not sound like how people speak in real life. In addition, whenever certain characters received life changing news, they didn’t react the way I imagine people in real life would react. They were very calm, cool, and collected rather than scared and emotional when the situation called for it.
In my opinion, the ending saved this book. There were a couple of revelations that shocked me, and there were plenty of twists and turns that I never saw coming. One of the reasons why I was sold on reading this book was because the blurb mentioned a crazy twist ending. The author definitely delivered on that aspect. I therefore rate this book 2 out of 4 stars. I don’t think I can recommend this book as is because of all the errors. However, I really think that once the errors are cleared up and the writing style is polished, this could be a really amazing book.
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Sins Unforgiven
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