3 out of 4 stars
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Kaylin McFarren's book was named Twisted Treads for a good reason. The plot of this thriller really resembles an incredible ball of twisted and tightly bound threads.
The main character, named Akira Sato, is a female assassin who works for yakuza boss Mitsui-san, because she has a debt to him. One day Akira's boss tells her that she must commit another murder. He needs her to kill British married couple Paul and Sarah Lyon because Mitsui-san suspects that they murdered his sister. If Akira does this, she can give up her “profession” and start a new life. If she refuses, Mitsui-san’s men will kill her adoptive mother.
For this reason Akira takes a cruise ship on which the Lyons are traveling. In 10 days of the cruise, she needs to find out if they are guilty of the death of Mitsui-san's sister, and kill them if this is true. Suddenly, passengers aboard the ship begin to die one by one. Therefore, Akira, along with Devon, Paul Lyon's nephew, with whom she falls in love, has to figure out who is behind these deaths.
Thus, the crime story, the thriller, and the romance were twisted together right at the very beginning of the book. Later on, the number of genre "threads" will only increase. According to the author, she was wondering how many storylines she would be able to weave together. And as it turned out, she was capable of very much.
The book is beautifully written and published. This is not surprising because Kaylin McFarren received more than forty national literary awards. When she describes a luxury cruise ship or tropical islands, they seem to stand before the reader's eyes all by themselves.
Again, the author has an amazing talent to keep the reader in constant suspense. The plot moves in totally unexpected loops and twists, and this does not allow the reader to break away from the book. In each new chapter something happens that seemed quite unexpected while reading the previous one.
The book has a lot of steamy love scenes. Although these scenes are very explicit, they are written in good language and are not too vulgar. In addition, these erotic interludes are useful for the plot. Since they are very neatly embedded between the episodes with plot intrigues and riddles, they delay the resolution of such riddles and help create the proper tension. Thus, the author linked smartly the psychological thriller, the crime story and the erotic novel, satisfying the fans of all three genres at the same time.
The characters of the book belong to its main advantages. For example, Akira is an assassin who is ashamed of her profession and does what she does, solely because of circumstances. For some reason, people love to read books and watch movies about assassins. People just seem to like bad guys (and bad girls too). Nonetheless, they still prefer as characters not soulless criminal psychopaths, but normal people capable of friendship and love. In fact, they prefer the good bad guys (and the good bad girls). As a result, a rather strange type of “reluctant assassin” has gradually formed in modern books and movies.
Akira just refers to this type. She is able to simultaneously kill six people with bare hands, but at the same time she frets over not being able to atone for her sins neither in this life nor in the future. With such a protagonist, any book is doomed to an obvious success.
In addition to it, Akira is a former geisha. On the one hand, it is a bit ridiculous, as if the author tried to squeeze as much Japanese exotics into her book as she could. On the other hand, the position of a girl who learned to sing, dance and entertain guests from her childhood, and then suddenly and against her own wishes drastically changed her occupation, really seems unusual and causes sympathy.
As it should be for the traditional “reluctant assassin”, behind the stern facade Akira hides her sensitive nature. In her heart she is a kind and sweet girl. Interestingly, on board a cruise ship, where Akira penetrates under the guise of an ordinary tourist, she just depicts a nice sweet girl. In turn, this leads to a funny paradox - the heroine is forced to pretend to be herself. This is a kind of irony.
There is something funny in her relationship with Devon, too. Usually, if the hero of a book or a movie is a good bad guy, his girlfriend is an ingenuous and naive girl. In Twisted Threads, this traditional situation is turned inside out. It is a good bad girl and a simple guy that are described here as a couple. In one episode, Akira even bluntly says that she envies Devon's naivety. What is even more fun, the classic scenario with “damsel in distress”, which goes back almost to medieval tales of chivalry, is also turned inside out. All this should attract readers who like to read stories about strong women.
By the way, Twisted Threads is the final installment in the Threads book series but can be read standalone. Therefore, the main characters in this story were extracted from previous books, where they were marginal participants. Akira hails from Buried Threads and Devon comes from Severed Threads.
Theoretically, Twisted Threads could be assessed as high as possible. Unfortunately, there are several oddities in this across-the-board magnificent book that could hardly be overlooked.
For example, the Japanese assassin’s name is written on her sword in Roman letters. Why does she mark her sword with a letter from the Roman alphabet, and not with a hieroglyph or a syllable sign from the kana? This is extremely strange.
However, this is only a fiction. Let's say that the heroine just liked the Roman letters.
But one more mistake is too great even for an erotic thriller. The book mentions the Chinese Princess Li Chen several times, which also travels on a ship. But then the mainland China, and Taiwan, and Singapore are all republics. Chinese princesses have not existed for more than a hundred years. Besides, the surname of the last imperial dynasty was Aisin Gioro, not Li.
In principle, such trifles could be ignored but when they are scattered up and down the text, this is too much. Therefore, I give Twisted Threads 3 out of 4.
In all other respects, this book is very well written. It can appeal to those readers who love psychological thrillers, crime stories, and erotic and love novels. Since this book contains overt scenes of violence and sex, I do not recommend it to children.
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Twisted Threads
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