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areaderheart's review
I can already tell this one is gonna suck. Read a couple of reviews and that seems to be the general consensus. So not gonna waste my time with it.
vperkins13mk's review
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
jaylaccey's review
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
mcipher's review
2.0
Yes, trashy, trashy, trashy! But I figured it'd be fun. It was... okay. Not what I thought. No spine tingles and the ending sucked. I mean, I know it's not great literature, but it was like plod, plod, plod greatbigrushtofinish and nothing was tied up satisfyingly, even. I want my trash with a neat bow tied around it, okay? A bow that makes sense and makes me feel like "aaaah, that feels good". I didn't care about the bad guy getting caught, I didn't care about the characters, and the more I write of this review, the more "meh" I feel about the book. Ugh, why I am reading so much into a short trashy paperback??
errantdreams's review
1.0
Amanda Stevens’s The Dollmaker uses post-Katrina New Orleans as its colorful backdrop. Its characters are moderately interesting but not terribly surprising nor unusual.
The plot is relatively good, although it didn’t have that taut, down-to-the-wire feel of a truly good thriller. The mysteries weren’t deep, and there was little question in my mind as to how things would end. The tension wasn’t drawn out very well.
The part that actively annoyed me, however, is that yet again we’re given a view of someone with ‘non-standard’ sexuality as a psychopathic deviant. The fact that the psychopathy stems from how the character was treated is really incidental–the seat of the problem remains the character’s unorthodox sexuality. This has become a cheap way to manufacture psychos in thrillers, and it’s doing a real disservice to those people who don’t quite fit society’s view of ‘normal’.
All in all The Dollmaker was okay, but that last issue soured it for me. This book was published in 2012, well past the point where authors should know better; that’s enough to drop this book from a 2.5 out of 5 in my eyes to a 1 out of 5.
Visit my site for a longer version of this review including premise: http://www.errantdreams.com/2014/08/review-the-dollmaker-amanda-stevens/
The plot is relatively good, although it didn’t have that taut, down-to-the-wire feel of a truly good thriller. The mysteries weren’t deep, and there was little question in my mind as to how things would end. The tension wasn’t drawn out very well.
The part that actively annoyed me, however, is that yet again we’re given a view of someone with ‘non-standard’ sexuality as a psychopathic deviant. The fact that the psychopathy stems from how the character was treated is really incidental–the seat of the problem remains the character’s unorthodox sexuality. This has become a cheap way to manufacture psychos in thrillers, and it’s doing a real disservice to those people who don’t quite fit society’s view of ‘normal’.
All in all The Dollmaker was okay, but that last issue soured it for me. This book was published in 2012, well past the point where authors should know better; that’s enough to drop this book from a 2.5 out of 5 in my eyes to a 1 out of 5.
Visit my site for a longer version of this review including premise: http://www.errantdreams.com/2014/08/review-the-dollmaker-amanda-stevens/
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