I tried, I really tried. One of my sisters is an author. She says that she gives books 50 pages. If the book doesn’t hold her interest by then, she cuts her losses and abandons the book.
Her policy inoculated me from guilt at not finishing this book. If a professional word-person gives me permission not to read a book that I don’t want to read, I’m taking it.
This book was a free give-away from Amazon to Kindle owners. I didn’t waste any money on the book, but it sure cost me some time. I gave this book a lot more than 50 pages. My Kindle says that I was 80% through, before I finally put it down in confusion. I just couldn’t finish it. I tried, but then I started daydreaming about cutting my fingernails or ironing my shirts. It says something about a book when you make excuses not to read it. It says: “I don’t want to read this book.”
Cold tries to be an international thriller. But it fails to thrill. I take some of that back. In fact, it has a very gripping scene of revenge that was horrifyingly violent. But it didn’t come until the second or third chapter, which is not where you should put a scene that it supposed to grab the reader’s attention. The rest of the story is hard to follow. The characters are not sympathetic. Maybe it’s too British. Maybe I don’t understand English culture enough. Maybe I know too much about world politics to be wowed by jumping from one country to the other.
Maybe it’s me.
Or maybe it’s just a poorly-written book.
Either way, I’m not finishing it.