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gaiainc's review against another edition
3.0
Overall OK. In case you’re wondering Deborah is Tall and she doesn’t do Relationships which is why she sort of falls into one with the guy who is her dead boss’s lawyer (insert eye roll). The plot is decent but seriously Deborah is jetting off to a lot of places kind of randomly. Glad I only paid a dollar for it
subversivegrrl's review against another edition
1.0
Awful, terrible, wretched book. How bad is it? Let me count the ways.
First off, a charming, handsome man shows up saying he is with the law firm for a rich guy who just was murdered, although he had never had the opportunity to meet the deceased himself (very convenient to explain his lack of direct knowledge about the dead guy. Also a handy, if clumsy, way for the author to reveal his bad-guy-ness when he later mentions some supposed personal interaction, which the heroine totally misses. The moron.) So of course the heroine is instantly attracted to him and accepts his story at face value, revealing pretty much all her secret inside information about what might have precipitated the murder, which she keeps hidden even from the police. Even when things start happening to her in places where only he knew she was going, she doesn't seem to question his involvement. Apparently this woman has never seen a thriller movie or read a mystery.
Secondly, a mysterious caller gives her a warning, and when she meets the guy and realizes he is also the person who previously broke into her apartment and lurked around there waiting for her, she goes ahead and makes plans to take a little road trip and investigate a historical site with him. And when someone takes several shots at her, she initially assumes it's coincidental, because no one could possibly be trying to kill her, even though she's already been warned that her life is in danger. The woman is portrayed as MONUMENTALLY dense. No 21st century woman with any sense would get in a car alone with a complete stranger, let alone one who she already knows is shady.
Big surprise, the one person she trusts turns out to be the bad guy, people she distrusts turn out to be her strongest allies. Along the way Mr. Hartley churns out plot complication after plot complication, until I just couldn't wait for it to be all over. I have to confess that at one point I was hoping the main character would get killed off. She was an embarrassment to modern women everywhere.
Oh, and the set-ups were ridiculously telegraphed. "She cleaned up her nails and slipped the file into her back pocket..." so she can fortuitously recall its presence a little while later and use it to escape from the bad guys. Yeah, it was really that transparent. Blergh.
A tiny picky detail - I mean, there are so many BIG reasons to hate this one - Hartley uses a phrase THREE TIMES that instantly told me he was a Brit: "finish up", meaning not "complete" but more like "arrive" -- the phrase an American would use in the same context would be either "end up" or "wind up." No clue why he would put this story in an American setting. Dude, write what you know. Like, not about women, for one thing. I also could really have done without the repeated flogging of the platitude about "handsome men don't go for marginally-attractive women like [Deborah Miller]."
First off, a charming, handsome man shows up saying he is with the law firm for a rich guy who just was murdered, although he had never had the opportunity to meet the deceased himself (very convenient to explain his lack of direct knowledge about the dead guy. Also a handy, if clumsy, way for the author to reveal his bad-guy-ness when he later mentions some supposed personal interaction, which the heroine totally misses. The moron.) So of course the heroine is instantly attracted to him and accepts his story at face value, revealing pretty much all her secret inside information about what might have precipitated the murder, which she keeps hidden even from the police. Even when things start happening to her in places where only he knew she was going, she doesn't seem to question his involvement. Apparently this woman has never seen a thriller movie or read a mystery.
Secondly, a mysterious caller gives her a warning, and when she meets the guy and realizes he is also the person who previously broke into her apartment and lurked around there waiting for her, she goes ahead and makes plans to take a little road trip and investigate a historical site with him. And when someone takes several shots at her, she initially assumes it's coincidental, because no one could possibly be trying to kill her, even though she's already been warned that her life is in danger. The woman is portrayed as MONUMENTALLY dense. No 21st century woman with any sense would get in a car alone with a complete stranger, let alone one who she already knows is shady.
Big surprise, the one person she trusts turns out to be the bad guy, people she distrusts turn out to be her strongest allies. Along the way Mr. Hartley churns out plot complication after plot complication, until I just couldn't wait for it to be all over. I have to confess that at one point I was hoping the main character would get killed off. She was an embarrassment to modern women everywhere.
Oh, and the set-ups were ridiculously telegraphed. "She cleaned up her nails and slipped the file into her back pocket..." so she can fortuitously recall its presence a little while later and use it to escape from the bad guys. Yeah, it was really that transparent. Blergh.
A tiny picky detail - I mean, there are so many BIG reasons to hate this one - Hartley uses a phrase THREE TIMES that instantly told me he was a Brit: "finish up", meaning not "complete" but more like "arrive" -- the phrase an American would use in the same context would be either "end up" or "wind up." No clue why he would put this story in an American setting. Dude, write what you know. Like, not about women, for one thing. I also could really have done without the repeated flogging of the platitude about "handsome men don't go for marginally-attractive women like [Deborah Miller]."
fayepotterhead's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.75
mash369's review against another edition
4.0
easy to read historical fiction murder mystery. Not as good as Steve Berry or Dan Brown but still entertaining.
andrealoverke's review against another edition
3.0
good book. and some twists I totally didn't expect. read it in Dutch, should have read it in English, that would have made it better.
dimgiav's review against another edition
3.0
A book that i got totally random. At first i thought it was just ok, but at some point i could not leave it till the end. if you like fiction based on historical persons then it will be more than good for you. [a:A.J. Hartley|270624|A.J. Hartley|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1311026941p2/270624.jpg] does nice job revealing the plot in parts so you won't bored.
wildflowerz76's review against another edition
4.0
At last year's Dragon*Con, I had a free time slot and nothing to do, so I went with a friend to a panel of best-selling authors. Now, I do love to read, but this one was being done by the Writer's Track. While I do love to read, as is obvious by these posts, I'm not a writer. So, I generally avoid that track. Still, it was a chance to get to see Jim Butcher. Laurell K. and Sherrilyn Kenyon were on the panel too, but I'd seen both before and I didn't care to see the second one ever again. There were also 3 other authors on the panel. So, I was waiting in line while my friend was doing something or other and one of the other authors on the panel came out to inspect the line and see what was going on. The author was AJ Hartley. I'd never heard of him before. No one in our part of the line had, so he was telling us about his books when someone asked if he had any with him they could buy. Soon, he had tons of requests for them. Not being one to resist adorable, slightly awkward British boys, I bought his new one, a fantasy book, and he signed it for me. I STILL haven't gotten around to reading it, but I did pick up two of his modern day thrillers at the used book store a while ago. I read the first one a while back and liked it well enough. I liked this one okay too, but there was something missing for me. The 'who' in 'whodunit' I picked up a bad vibe from in the beginning, though I'm not sure we were supposed to. I caught the slipup made by the person too. Usually I don't, but maybe I'm just getting better? I don't know. This was a nice enough read, but far from joining any lists of my favorite books.
courtneylee87's review against another edition
1.0
Initially, I thought the combination of Nazi stolen loot and ancient Greek treasure seemed promising. However, after the first few chapters that proved to be false. Deborah’s character has no depth and is too clueless to believe that she is a museum curator. Everything is always “just out of reach” to the point where it is a plot hindrance rather than a character quirk. Her conversations with other characters only serve to showcase the author’s own racist and sexist ideas/opinions.
The plot was the worst part of the reading experience. It was patchwork at best, twisting and turning with additions that made little to no sense. The weak connection between “the mask of Atreus” and World War II was pathetic and irritating. The author should have chosen one or the other: a hunt for ancient Homeric treasure or a hunt for Nazi treasure. It may not have fixed the problem with the character arcs, but it would have been more logical.
The author uses generalization when delivering historical “facts” in this book and that is such a taboo when writing historical fiction. Generalizations are the enemy of history and its interpretation. It leads to dangerous rhetoric and cancel-culture. But again, the author’s prejudices come across so loud on the page that even narrowing it down and doing proper research still would not have helped this novel. This honestly read as a first draft of a manuscript from a student in a creative writing course who is not seriously interested in learning the craft of storytelling.
That said, I gave this book a 1 star rating. I will not be reading this author again because I found his storytelling disrespectful to history itself and the thriller novel genre and, more importantly, disrespectful to minorities. Hiding behind a Nazi in a fictional story does not make it okay for prejudice to spill onto the page without a clear reason.
The plot was the worst part of the reading experience. It was patchwork at best, twisting and turning with additions that made little to no sense. The weak connection between “the mask of Atreus” and World War II was pathetic and irritating. The author should have chosen one or the other: a hunt for ancient Homeric treasure or a hunt for Nazi treasure. It may not have fixed the problem with the character arcs, but it would have been more logical.
The author uses generalization when delivering historical “facts” in this book and that is such a taboo when writing historical fiction. Generalizations are the enemy of history and its interpretation. It leads to dangerous rhetoric and cancel-culture. But again, the author’s prejudices come across so loud on the page that even narrowing it down and doing proper research still would not have helped this novel. This honestly read as a first draft of a manuscript from a student in a creative writing course who is not seriously interested in learning the craft of storytelling.
That said, I gave this book a 1 star rating. I will not be reading this author again because I found his storytelling disrespectful to history itself and the thriller novel genre and, more importantly, disrespectful to minorities. Hiding behind a Nazi in a fictional story does not make it okay for prejudice to spill onto the page without a clear reason.
helenace13's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
I did not see the plot twist coming, reads nicely.