KINGS OF DELUSIONKINGS OF DELUSION by E.J. Findorff
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

From the beginning it had me hooked and I thought this was going to be a four star read for sure. It gets straight into the the murder of a family where the only survivor is the 16 year old daughter, who then continues to be hunted down whilst Katrina roars around the city of New Orleans.

So from a really strong start my score fell down to two stars. There are some strange scenes that just ‘pop up’, some involving sex where the timing feels quite odd/unexpected. Also there are quite a few of descriptions that sexualise the 16 year old character which are not relevant to the story and slightly contradict the outcome at the end. Overall I felt like I was watching the 1974 movie Earthquake, it had the drama and suspense but the layer of sleaze means you are not able to take it that seriously.

This is actually a shame as the premise was good and with an additional edit these issues could be rectified and the story enhanced. A particular opportunity would be the back story of the killer, I think much more could have been made of this to good effect. There could have been an opening chapter contextualising a scene from the past as well as snippets throughout the book which would really draw you in to quite a dark place. Jo Nesbo does this quite a bit and often works well for thriller reads. So overall, unfortunately, only 2 stars from me :(.

Many thanks to Maxine for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.