3 out of 4 stars
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Running Through the Wormhole, a CMTS novel by Kate Abbott, is a must read! The novel takes you through a series of traumatic events of a middle-aged lawyer, mother, and wife, Phoebe. The drama starts early on as the character is attacked and raped by two mystery men. During the course of events an even more mysterious man comes and rescues her. From that point on, nothing in Phoebe's life is normal or boring. As the story continues to unfold you learn the truth about her distant husband, the literally ancient history of her rescuer, and the deranged logic of a psychopath. There are constant twists and turns throughout the story that make it easy to keep reading until the unpredictable end.
I loved the way the story slips so smoothly between past and present. I did find it interesting that instead of questioning what was going on, all of the characters just kind of go with it and act like nothing happened. I think bringing in ghosts from the past added a unique twist to the story and helped keep things unpredictable. The author did a great job tying up all the lose ends by the end of the book. I am not really sure what, if any, message the author was trying to convey with this story. It has the typical "good always triumphs" feel to it, but is by no means a story with only happy endings. It has enough realistic content to make it easy to relate to, but mixes enough fiction to allow the reader to escape reality and enter a world of unpredictable unfortunate events.
I would give this story a 3 out of 4 stars. Honestly, I think with a little revising it could easily earn 4 stars. One of the biggest reasons I gave this book only 3 stars is due to the number of errors that I found while reading it. There are numerous grammatical and typographical errors starting around page 80 and continuing throughout the remainder of the novel. Another error I noted was a name change. One of the rescuers later in the story is named Edith, however when referenced later she is called Esther. The overall writing style of the book gets a bit erratic at times and could use with some smoothing out, but still easy to read and follow so it is not a big deterring factor.
The second reason I felt this novel only earned 3 stars was due to the sometimes unclear shifts in perspective. The story starts off really well as you read from Phoebe's perspective. The first change takes place when you start reading from her husband David's perspective, however there is an unclear change as you enter Annette's perspective. From that point on, although the chapters refer to a specific perspective, you actually switch perspectives sporadically while in the middle of a page with no notation. I think more consistency in perspective or a more clear notation that perspective is changing would help. I also think putting a characters thoughts (as opposed to spoken words) in italics, instead of quotes or no notation at all, would make that difference more clear.
This book would make a great read for readers that like a fast-paced story. The author keeps the day-to-day events to a minimum, using them only to show passage of time and focuses most on the dramatic content of the storyline. Every time you think the story is about to wrap up with a happy ending, something else happens that throws a wrench in things. The book finally slows down at the end as the author goes back and wraps up all the loose ends from earlier parts in the story. It was easy to read this book in one sitting since it is not too long and doesn't offer many good pause points (which is not really a bad thing!)
In conclusion, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone that enjoys a good suspense novel. You are pushed to continue flipping pages (or swiping your finger) until the end as the past and the present collide in a trauma-filled story with unpredictable events!
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Running Through the Wormhole
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