Happy Sunday!

I hope you’re having a good weekend so far.

I’ve finished prepping the homework schedule for the upcoming week, which again has an extensive list of everything Kid1 needs to do, and still prepare for two tests for the end of the week. I know school just started, but when are the holidays again?

Today, I’m sharing my review on Tess Gerritsen’s book “Call After Midnight”. I finished reading it earlier this year but never had a chance to get to the actual review because there’s just so much going on.

If you’re not familiar with Tess Gerritsen, here’s some interesting information.

• Tess Gerritsen is a pseudonym. Her real name is Terry Gerritsen. She decided to feminise her name when she started writing romance novels.
• Her parents didn’t believe her writing career would be a good choice so she went into medicine. She’s a retired physician.
• She has written books in the following genres: romance thrillers, medical thrillers, crime thrillers and historical thrillers

I’ve read one of her books previously, “Under the Knife“, and it was the one that got me hooked on medical thrillers.

Book review: Call After Midnight by Tess Gerritsen #bookreview

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DISCLAIMER: This review could contain possible spoilers based on my opinions. All opinions and views are my own.

Plot:

Newlywed Sarah Fontaine receives a disturbing call about the accidental death of her husband, Geoffrey Fontaine. Convinced there has been a mistake and that he is still alive, she pairs up with Mick O’Hara from the US State Department, to uncover the truth. They find themselves travelling across Europe to map together the inconsistency of circumstances, becoming targets of the State Department, with the real killer still out there.

Sarah finds her whole world turned around as she discovers the truth behind who her husband was, and has to fight for own life as the road leads her in games of deadly espionage and double-lives.

My Opinion: Positive Thoughts

The plot of the story was actually pretty good, and I wasn’t expecting so many twists and turns along the way, which at some point I did lose track of all the uncovered truths. It did add the drama aspect to the thriller, but was it a bit too much?

Usually I’m left feeling angry at the main antagonist of a book, but not in this one, as the main antagonist didn’t actually have such a strong presence in the book, just a few short mentions. I ended up wanting to shake another character into thinking what chaos they ended up causing and how selfish they were with their actions, and by doing that they did, they destroyed so many innocent lives along the way. This will make more sense after reading the book, so I don’t want to say more on this subject as it’s crucial information to the storyline.

My Opinion: Negative Thoughts

The plot actually fell through quite early in the book. The author tried too hard to sell off the fake bad guy which made it overly obvious that it wasn’t the guy the attention was on. I get needing to make it a ‘shock’ moment and if it was that easy, there wouldn’t have been more to the story really. It could’ve been done a little more subtly though.

Then the incompetence of the State Department seemed to be present in some parts of the book. Yes, they also make mistakes and all, but these mistakes were clear common sense mistakes, and as an ‘untrained‘ individual, I was able to think of things they would’ve done to avoid their self-made complications, surely they could’ve followed through on pretty basic procedures?

The romance part of the book. I rolled my eyes a lot. I often wonder when authors write romance pieces if they actually look at it from a realistic point of view. All the romance scenes made me feel I was reading a Mills and Boons book, and I started skipping over those parts as I couldn’t read the forced and make-belief scenes. This is actually where I lost one star for the rating. There’s drama and then there’s ridiculous.

Overview:

I did enjoy the fast-pace of the storyline and that it immediately jumped into an action scene, which was definitely one way to grasp my attention.

The female lead, who was supposed to come across strong and admirable, fell far short of the expectations the author might have set up. She came across as irritating from about the third chapter and it was a little difficult to feel her determination throughout the rest of the book. A book I might reread later on again, but there’s no guarantee.

My Rating:

The book has a rating of 3.63 on GoodReads. I gave it a 4 because I felt it lacked the emotion: it was lost with the characters, some characters weren’t written all too well and it was difficult to relate to them.

I did enjoy the plot, despite the overload of drama that wasn’t all that needed. I also kept in mind that this was one of the earliest books written by the author, so patchiness is expected.

Call After Midnight by Tess Gerritsen {Book Review} #bookreview

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Have you read Call After Midnight?

You can purchase it here.

Do you have a book you want reviewed?
Send me an email: sincerelyyoursannie@gmail.com