3 out of 4 stars
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Review: Twisted Threads by Kaylin McFarren
In this erotic thriller, former geiko, turned badass assassin, Akira Sato, embarks on an adventure on board of a cruise liner, named the Merry Mermaid, on a deadly mission to earn her freedom from a yakuza family and finds herself and real love in the way. She will need all her skills, both her seductive arts and her intelligence and training, to accomplish this mission; and all her self-honesty and courage to find true happiness.
Twisted Threads is part of the Threads series, but can be read perfectly as a stand-alone book. This novel has many accomplishments, of which my favorite is its originality. The genre is not a common one, mixing romance, erotica, adventure and mystery with expertise, without showing shortages in the development of any of these areas. The characters are quirky and unique, without appearing unreal. We have a treasure hunter, a hypnotist, a Samoan bodyguard and a mysterious character only identified as “the watcher”, among others, and you get to care and understand where each character comes from and why they act the way they do, worrying deeply about their fate through the many deadly scenarios of the novel.
The dialogues are well constructed and rich, the descriptions are successfully painted, and the narrative is luxurious in its vocabulary without seeming presumptuous or being hard to understand. I really enjoyed the erotic scenes, which are racy but not vulgar. However, this book is only meant for mature audiences, since it´s very explicit in its sexual content.
The book changes pace drastically once you cover two-thirds of it. The first two- thirds read mostly as a romantic and erotic novel with a little mystery, but it turns dark and fast paced once you approach the end. I don´t think this is a mistake, but you shouldn´t expect a fast ride all the way or an unputdownable novel at first.
On the downside, there are two aspects that made the reading slow. First, it has a lot of formatting and editing issues, especially when read on a Kindle e-reader or mobile reader app. There are letters missing, words that are not separated properly or that have an extra space, words in bold that make no sense and paragraphs chopped. The header showing the title and author doesn´t adjust properly to e-readers (at least Kindle ones) and you end up with headers in the middle of the page. All this can turn very annoying. Secondly, the author uses a lot of Japanese culture terms without providing much explanation for them. I understand that this is due to the subject of the book and the very nature of her protagonist, but it can slow down the reading to constantly look up terms if you´re not familiar with this culture. It also uses drop cap initials in the typography (standing out the first letter of the chapter), which probably looks great on paperback or even on a simple PDF file, but not so much on an ebook. However, this is just my opinion.
I rate this book 3 out of 4 stars. The subject is original, the plot is appealing and engaging, the characters are very well constructed and the narrative is performed with real dexterity, but I can´t give it 4 stars because it lacks a lot of formatting and editing work.
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Twisted Threads
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