Un brivido nelle ossa

3.5You know when you read the ingredients for a dish or a cocktail and your mouth just starts to water because HELL YES I love lavender and lavender flan must be off the hook and then .... no. Just no. You won't gag or anything like that but you're disappointed. That's this book for me. Good on paper.I'll start with the first obviously annoying thing, the rendering of D's vernacular speech. Fine. He's southern or and Okie or something like that. We don't need to be reminded at every turn. It became exhausting to read which is when I resorted to the audio by [a:Alan Smith 235551 Alan Smith https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] who does a phenomenal job. However at some point even he realized that this book goes on FOREVER. It clocks in at 13 1/2 hours of audio. I think whenever he looked at the script and saw how much he had left to go he sped up his reading which then made things sound rushed and I had to switch back to the text. It was a back and forth struggle. Next up is Jack. I hated more than loved him, which is a problem, though hate is maybe too strong a word. I disliked him and wanted to smack him around a bit. I disliked his perfection, hissy fits, and sanctimoniousness. D is literally laying his life on the line for Jack and he finds the balls to judge what D has done or is willing to do to keep him alive. Ungrateful much? Also I know Jack has been uprooted and is going through a harrowing experience but we are regularly reminded of the fact that Jack is an excellent maxillofacial surgeon and the surgeons I know tend to have nerves of steel. I don't know. Sometimes I felt that the choice of Jack's profession and specialty where to highlight his perfection and goodness, after all who doesn't love the Operation Smile doctors. Also later when circumstances separate them Jack vacillates a little too quickly in my book in his faith to D. We come to D. Why couldn't he just be a hard s.o.b felled and brought to his knees by love. I'd be drooling all over that. Instead D has a whole back story of “reasons” and other “stuff” because if he were a bad guy he somehow wouldn't deserve a turn around and love? WTF? Then there was everybody else: the super villain straight out of a 70's Bond movie; the minor villain (the drug dealer) who is somehow speaking like Yoda towards the end and who gives me reason to gripe at the writer because Raoul is the French spelling of the name. If you are Latin it is Raul. Also if you're going to have three words of Spanish said maybe get a native speaker to look them over and within context? Was Carida meant to be “querida”, Spanish for dear in the feminine form or the name Caridad just missing the d as a typo? etc. Another stock character is D's quasi guardian angel, X, who seems to be at times omniscient. I'll stop. Because in spite of all this I can't say I hated it. The writing was quite good and the writer clearly knows her way through a court proceeding and medical descriptions, be it by experience or research, either way it's appreciated. However I feel like she checked off all the points on a PC list instead of going for flawed people doing their best. I myself like f**ked up people who fail and try again over angels whose feet don't tread the ground.I think that with some editing and tweaking I could love this story or maybe I will at some other juncture in my life. It surprised me at times with beautiful flights of writing like this:“The ridges of scars passed beneath his palms. A knife wound here, some road rash there, markers in the haunted moor of D's body, what it had done and what had been done to it.”I wouldn't discourage anyone from reading it because it may just be your jam. In spite of everything I'll check out some shorts about D & Jack on the author's website.