Wednesday, July 15, 2009

One Scream Away by Kate Brady


Title: One Scream Away
Author: Kate Brady
ISBN: 9780446541527
Publisher: Forever/2009
Pages: 423

One Scream Away is all over the book blogging world, either reviewed or in giveaways. It is what is supposed to be psycho thriller, or should I call it romantic thriller? The latter sounds more like it.

Chevy Bankes is free from prison and is hunting for Beth Denison. On his way to her, he kills a lot of women and leaves behind lots of clues including antique dolls. After he kills those women, he calls Beth from their cellphones and lets her know he is getting nearer and nearer. He likes to listen to the sreams of those women he kills and keeps a record of those.

Neil, a ex-FBI agent is brought in see how is Beth involved in all this. At first it is taken that she is somehow involved with the murderer or is an accomplish in those murders. Neil discovers she is a woman with a past and can go to any length to protect her six year old daughter. Although Beth lets him protect her and her daughter, yet she conceals her secret. Chevy is always one step ahead. He knows exactly the whereabouts of Beth and her daughter and is getting closer and closer.

Neil falls for Beth in a very short period of time. Ok, she has a sweet daughter but that isn't any reason for falling in love with her so fast?

One Scream away is kind of a fast read. And utterly forgettable after reading it. Chevy has some problems. He has a mother fixation and loves his sister Jenny dearly. And kills woman for no apparant reason. A true psychopath one might call him. However, killing so many innocent women just to get to Beth did not gel with me. I found there are too many people trying to protect Beth but what about those other women, who were killed? And what took the police so long to learn about Jenny, especially when she had gone missing since she was a small child? And how does Chevy find her after all these years. Beth kept her past hidden for seven years. If she had told it all seven years back, Chevy would still be in jail, all those women still alive and no novel written by Kate Brady! Is that a good thing or bad, I am not sure!

I like psycho thrillers. And getting into the killers mind. And not being able to predict till the end about the motivation. Here I could predict it much before and somehow knew about Chevy's mother and his sister right in the middle. And I am not really all for drop-dead georgeous ex-FBI agents whose brains seem to be in the wrong place.

This book is for those, who don't wish to think much after reading it. For all its fault, it is definitely a very fast read and I did like the epilogue. That redeems this novel to a large extent. Of course it works well for increasing your book count too.

8 comments:

bermudaonion said...

I think I'll skip this one. Thanks for the review.

Anonymous said...

I don't like when two people fall in love too fast. Most of the time it completely negates the rest of the book for me.

Staci said...

Major creepy factor!! Sounds like an intense read!!

The Reading Momster said...

I think I will skip this one too!

Anna said...

Hmm...not too sure about this one now. Thanks for the honest review.

--Anna
Diary of an Eccentric

ibeeeg said...

I am thinking this book is not for me.
I am not into thriller very much and a quick falling in love gets old...KWIM?
Thanks for your thoughts.

Teddyree said...

Thanks for your review, I like thrillers where you are kept guessing right to the very end so I think I might give this one a miss!

Mary (Bookfan) said...

Well, at least the epilogue was satisfactory : )