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Book Review of The First Counsel

The First Counsel
natalexx avatar reviewed on + 52 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 5


This one totally sucked me in. A book review quoted on the back cover says it's "fast-paced and suspenseful throughout" and that is actually true. This is a guy who knows the economy of words. I have a very low quota for thrillers, and I was reading along (very quickly), thinking this was a simple, toss-away read like any old Grisham or Crichton novel and not really that bothered by it when sometimes the characters seemed to take a sharp left-turn out of nowhere and for no explained reason. Plot points occasionally need to come out of nowhere in a thriller. However, there was one sharp out-of-nowhere twist at the end (meant to explain the entire mystery) that left me feeling slightly nauseated. It was so sudden and random, in fact, that it pretty much wiped out my opinion of the novel up to then. So the casual recommendation I was going to offer "to fans of light thrillers" is now heavily qualified by the bad feeling this book left me with. I kinda resent the way the narrative jerked me around.