I hesitated about reviewing this book, but decided that even a 3 star review can be useful to an author – I felt I had enough positive to say to balance the negative to make it worth it, so here it is.
Epicentre by Chris AndrewsMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Grace is a mermaid with a problem: to survive, she has to drown a human every so often to steal their lifeforce, but her own human existence is still too recent for her conscience to be comfortable with the trade-off.
I rarely finish reading a book that for me ends up being a 3 star read, more often I give up. This one kept me reading for a number of reasons: I loved the concept – Grace is dangerous and she knows it, often warning the humans she ends up becoming close to. Her struggle with her own nature is very well depicted, as is her character in general. Pretty much all the characters are well drawn, the dialogue is great, descriptive passages too. My main hang up came with the plot.
The book splits into two halves that almost read like different stories. Around the midpoint, Grace acquires super powers that turn the plot in a completely different direction. She gets shot so often, and mends herself using her ‘limited lifeforce’, I got tired of it. I never felt she was in any real danger because it happens so many times without consequence. Two or three times I could have lived with, but I lost count, and her protestations of being near the end of her limits lost credibility.
There was also the question of typos. I know not everyone bothers about them, and the text wasn’t littered with them, but for me there were enough to be distracting.
This is the start of a series, and happily wraps up this story nicely while laying the groundwork for the next, which I appreciate, but I’m afraid I won’t be continuing.
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deborahjay 
It is so hard to write an upbeat 3/5 review but you’ve done it. I appreciate your thoughts and the writer will definitely benefit from them.
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Thanks Jacqui, I’m not sure how this review will be taken, if the author reads his own reviews – I wonder if he’ll be offended, but I hope not.
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I won’t pretend I am happy with 3/5 or lower reviews but the only ones I mind are those that seem unsupported. I have one I’m going to talk about on Wednesday (for #iwsg day). You did great!
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Thank you, Jacqui, for that vote of confidence, and that’s prompted me to discuss one of my own 3 stars in my next post 😀
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I admire your bravery to write your truth Deb. But I thought you did a great job of making your points and offering constructive criticism. Now of course I have to hop over to the Zon to see the general consensus of ratings, lol 🙂 xx
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Thanks Deb, I agonized over it, I really don’t like giving 3 star reviews, but there was enough positive to persuade me in the end to do so. As far as I can find, although the book has 7 ratings, mine seems to be the ony review.
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Strange that! But good for you 🙂 xx
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