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A review by nglofile
Hell or High Water by Joy Castro
1.0
First, a quibble with the series note ("Nola Cespedes Mysteries #1"): this is not a mystery -- not even close.
It's also not a suspense/thriller, despite the opening which plops us into a young woman's unexplained disappearance. [By the way, leading with that, and then doing nothing with it, is just poor narrative structure, and portraying it through the perspective of a younger child is transparently manipulative.] Thrillers and suspense novels are all about pacing, and this work has looooong dry passages in which the author just shovels her research to the reader -- and in settings no more imaginative than employing a journalist reflecting on her own data and/or interviewing subjects.
Recently I've experienced quite a few stories set in post-Katrina New Orleans, and this was by far the least engaging. What a tremendous disappointment.
It's also not a suspense/thriller, despite the opening which plops us into a young woman's unexplained disappearance. [By the way, leading with that, and then doing nothing with it, is just poor narrative structure, and portraying it through the perspective of a younger child is transparently manipulative.] Thrillers and suspense novels are all about pacing, and this work has looooong dry passages in which the author just shovels her research to the reader -- and in settings no more imaginative than employing a journalist reflecting on her own data and/or interviewing subjects.
Recently I've experienced quite a few stories set in post-Katrina New Orleans, and this was by far the least engaging. What a tremendous disappointment.