I really, really don’t like leaving less than 3 star reviews. It would be brutal to have someone harshly critique one of my blog posts, let alone a novel I spent countless hours writing! My heart goes out to all writers, including Mark Marinovich, but I have to leave honest reviews that accurately reflect my experience with the books I read and review. I won the Kindle version of this book on a Goodreads giveaway. Being an avid traveler, the cover intrigued me enough to enter the contest. I really should have read more about it…my bad. There were two separate stories within the book, both totally focused on hunting—something I have zero interest in. I found the secondary story pretty irrelevant to the main story and the flipping between them totally distracting. The dialogue—both external and internal—of all of the characters was only mildly realistic at best and intensely irritating at worst. I found the main character, Paul, to be an unbelievably self-absorbed man-boy from beginning to end; the remaining characters were not well developed, so I never deeply connected with any of them. I’ve been an avid reader for approaching five decades—at this point, a book must change me in some way, I gotta LOVE the characters, or the dialogue has to make me laugh out loud to earn a 3, 4 or 5 star from me. Hence, 2 stars for this one.
