REVIEW for Flash and Bones

Thank you, thank you goes out to Simon & Schuster Canada for so kindly sending me a copy of this book.

TITLE:              Flash and Bones

AUTHOR:        Kathy Reichs

GENRE:           Thriller

RATING:         2.5 Stars

****** SPOILER ALERT*******

I definitely have a love/hate relationship with this author. While I have always made a point of reading all of her books, I have sometimes found myself in the very uncomfortable position of having to write reviews that have been less than complimentary.  Yet, for some reason, I continue to want to read her books and I admit that I even get excited when I know she is going to release a new one.

Not sure what that is about, but there you have it.

Now, as for Flash and Bones, I guess my overall review would start with this question - huh?

I kept reading page after page with the hope that the storyline would get engrossing as this is supposed to be a thriller - but I never got there.

As always, Reichs chooses a topic, in this case it was Nascar Racing, and explains it to death.  I have gotten use to this with her and I can usually just jump over it, but to be honest, this book felt more like the history of Nascar than a thriller.  Thanks to Reichs, I now know more about Nascar than I ever want to, including more facts on Montreal born Jacques Villeneuve than I ever want to know.

As I said, I would not have minded all of this if, somewhere in this novel, I could detect even a hint of intrigue.  The pace was glacial and on the off chance that something remotely interesting started happening, the author would stop in midstream to give us a tidbit of information that we did not really need, which completely interupted the flow of the story.

Actually, as I reread this book review, I realize that I simply found this book kind of boring.  I found myself wanting to jump several pages ahead in the hopes of finding some action.

The parts I did love are all about the relationships.  I liked the banter between Slidell and Tempe (it was a nice change of pace from Ryan) and I love it when Tempe and Birdie are together.  The introduction of Galimore was kind of forced, in my opinion, as I could see where this was going from the very first second.

A word on the book cover.  Wow!  could it be more boring? and I am still trying to figure out the connection between the book cover and the story.

While I obviously did not enjoy this book, for some weird reason, I already know that I will be picking up the next Temperance Brennan novel anyway.