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A review by kelic
Romancing the Null by Tina Gower
2.0
Synopsis- There are three kinds of lies. Lies the fates spin as half truths. Lies of destined love. And statistics. As a fateless, Kate Hale is immune to the first two, but the third kind of lie is her profession. After spending years as an actuary for the Traffic Department, Kate is promoted to Accidental Death Predictions. It’s all she’s worked toward, and her career is finally on track. But when an oracle delivers an impossible death prediction and insists on her help to solve the case, she might lose any chance of impressing the brass.
Her only hope comes in the form of the police liaison assigned to her department, latent werewolf Ian Becker. Becker can grant her the clearance to find answers, but he’s a wild card with a shady past who doesn’t play well with others.
Every prediction has a loophole, but if Kate can’t solve the case before the crime is fated to occur she won’t just lose her job–she’ll have the blood of an oracle on her hands.
Review- There were a lot of things I liked about this book- the plot was engaging, the characters were fun, and the world seemed interesting, but there were some major tone and timing issues that greatly affected my enjoyment of the novel.
So the premise, the MCs accidental involvement in subverting a massive terrorist plot which threw an unlikely cast of characters together, was not novel, but it was still incredibly readable and solid. The cast of characters were also rather cliché for this genre consisting of the zany one, the aloof and sensitive one, the gruff male and the cute intelligent female, but again, it didn't make the novel less than a four star read. There are a lot of books that have that kind of character formula but are consistently four and five stars reads, The Charley Davidson series for example.
What let the book down was the tone and the strange timing structure. In terms of tone it wanted to be a budding romance set in a fantasy mystery but the romantic moments came at the weirdest times. Like a character would have a sensitive moment talking about impending death and the MC would be all yeah, we need to keep you alive then immediately consider whether she's attracted to the werewolf. Or like the scene when just after the three main characters are thrown together they go back to a house and the werewolf falls asleep. Seriously? He just finds out the one of the characters will die in 48 hours, decides to take the case to prove himself but then immediately falls asleep? It was weird. And there were many odd moments like that. It would also sort of have big moments of action and then moments of exposition which made the story feel disjointed. It was emotionally confusing.
Overall though, I think the characters, the world and the story were more fun than the disjointed nature was weird. It's also a debut and the first in a series, so I'll cut the author some slack. Sadly, though it wasn't enough to get me to buy the next in the series. At least, not straightaway.
Rating - Two it was enjoyable if disjointed stars. ⭐⭐
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Devoured the book, couldn't put it down.
⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Really liked it, consumed within days
⭐⭐⭐ - Enjoyed a fair bit, better than average
⭐⭐ - Meh
⭐ - Absolute drivel
Her only hope comes in the form of the police liaison assigned to her department, latent werewolf Ian Becker. Becker can grant her the clearance to find answers, but he’s a wild card with a shady past who doesn’t play well with others.
Every prediction has a loophole, but if Kate can’t solve the case before the crime is fated to occur she won’t just lose her job–she’ll have the blood of an oracle on her hands.
Review- There were a lot of things I liked about this book- the plot was engaging, the characters were fun, and the world seemed interesting, but there were some major tone and timing issues that greatly affected my enjoyment of the novel.
So the premise, the MCs accidental involvement in subverting a massive terrorist plot which threw an unlikely cast of characters together, was not novel, but it was still incredibly readable and solid. The cast of characters were also rather cliché for this genre consisting of the zany one, the aloof and sensitive one, the gruff male and the cute intelligent female, but again, it didn't make the novel less than a four star read. There are a lot of books that have that kind of character formula but are consistently four and five stars reads, The Charley Davidson series for example.
What let the book down was the tone and the strange timing structure. In terms of tone it wanted to be a budding romance set in a fantasy mystery but the romantic moments came at the weirdest times. Like a character would have a sensitive moment talking about impending death and the MC would be all yeah, we need to keep you alive then immediately consider whether she's attracted to the werewolf. Or like the scene when just after the three main characters are thrown together they go back to a house and the werewolf falls asleep. Seriously? He just finds out the one of the characters will die in 48 hours, decides to take the case to prove himself but then immediately falls asleep? It was weird. And there were many odd moments like that. It would also sort of have big moments of action and then moments of exposition which made the story feel disjointed. It was emotionally confusing.
Overall though, I think the characters, the world and the story were more fun than the disjointed nature was weird. It's also a debut and the first in a series, so I'll cut the author some slack. Sadly, though it wasn't enough to get me to buy the next in the series. At least, not straightaway.
Rating - Two it was enjoyable if disjointed stars. ⭐⭐
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Devoured the book, couldn't put it down.
⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Really liked it, consumed within days
⭐⭐⭐ - Enjoyed a fair bit, better than average
⭐⭐ - Meh
⭐ - Absolute drivel