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Frosted Shadow, A Toni Diamond Mystery: A Romantic Comedy Mystery (2014)

by Nancy Warren(Favorite Author)

3.64 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0992078008 (ISBN13: 9780992078003)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Ambleside Publishing

review 1: You know you have mixed opinions on a book when you have 5 pages of notes but still couldn’t put it down. That was me with this book. I don’t want to be a negative nelly as a reviewer and I must say, I really enjoyed this book. The story itself was great, the murder mystery, though I did often feel like I was 10 again reading about missing objects and following the clues along with the character, rather than being a grown up reading a grown up book! But that’s not technically a bad thing, it was great to remember what it was like to be 10 years old!So the book begins and we meet Toni Diamond, a strong independent business woman. I didn’t like her but I also loved her, she very much came across as someone I would not get on with in real life but I still admired her ... morefor her talent and skill in the makeup industry. The first thing to make me cringe with this book was the fact business cards are handed out over the murdered corpse, ok, the author did mention that the character was not beyond it but there was no mention of it being disrespectful or anything and this was the first time I thought “I don’t like Toni Diamond”. By the next page I had to take a break, I was very confused. The story felt so slow with overly told perspectives and then at the same time with many clues already figured out in the first 6% of the book it felt too fast! It was making my head spin.I considered abandoning the book at this point, I knew I was going to probably have a love/hate relationship with the book but I decided to persevere simply because I wanted to know who the murderer was!“Her face was flushed with either anger or fear. Or maybe high blood pressure.” Hated this line and had to read it multiple times. It isn’t described at all, we as the reader are told the character’s face is flushed either because of anger or fear or high blood pressure. I was always taught not to start a sentence with the word ‘Or’ another one the author does is the word ‘and’ at 18% the author writes this sentence “And blondr” now forget the spelling mistake, it was the only one I really noticed in the whole book! However, that is not a sentence. I can’t understand why it has been written with a full stop before the word AND just for two words, it didn’t need any punctuation there at all. This brings me smoothly to my next point. The editing was great other than the one above I did not come across any spelling errors but there were a load of punctuation errors that really made me cringe. It felt like neither the author nor the editor understood when and how to use semi-colons and because of this many sentences (from one full stop to another) seemed completely lost in limbo as it had not been connected right to the sentence before it with the use of a semi colon. One or two of these and I honestly wouldn’t notice but when it keeps happening and breaks the reading flow… yeah it’s noticed. Ok, my next ‘what the hell’ moment came when I arrived in chapter 7 and read the word putrid for the second time. Now putrid means “decaying or rotten” and is most often associated with smell. However, in Chapter 5 it is used to describe the colour purple. “a putrid purple” which is fair enough it might be a rotten purple for the character Luke who I believe is the one thinking this but when the word putrid is used again in Chapter 7 to describe purple and then compare it to Easter baskets it makes absolutely no sense. Who associates something disgusting with Easter?? I had to check to see if the USA definition of this word was different to the UK one because I did not understand otherwise why it was written in this way. Nope, putrid is the same in UK and US English. I found the building attraction between Luke and Toni very poorly written, I got it just. I mean, subtle touches, him coming to rescue her and so on were tiny signs that it was coming (and that fact I knew there was romance in the book) but it just wasn’t put out there that this attraction was there and building, it kind of just happened and left me as a reader going… “What?” I mean it kind of jumped from him coming to rescue her, a subtle touch and a random kiss to having sex! There was no real description of how the physical body was reacting nor the mental thought process of either character building up to the romance, it was all told and never shown. Being completely honest, I was disappointed with the way the book was written because I enjoyed it so much! If it was just that the story wasn’t told to me and instead shown to me, I couldn’t imagine any of the characters or visualise their behaviour or actions.“She already seen [removed for spoiler]. Half [spoiler] head blown off.” Serioulsy? That’s it? When someone sees a head blown off they don’t just see a head blown off, they see blood splatter, a gapping red hole, etc. None of this was described, the author just told me the head was blown off. It didn’t make me squirm, didn’t make me feel a little sick, it just happened.Right, onto the positives; this story kept me guessing all the way to the very end. I haven’t read a mystery in years because I always figured it out before the end but hand on my heart I didn’t with this book. That is the reason for 4 stars instead of 3 because it takes a great mystery writer to keep me guessing and Nancy achieved it with this!
review 2: I downloaded this book to my Kindle because it was free, and I fancied some lighthearted reading. I was not disappointed! Toni Diamond is a sassy and intelligent cosmetic saleswoman, with a penchant for asking questions. I had wondered whether the heroine might get annoying, with her sales talk cliches, however the author, Nancy Warren, keeps Toni on the right side of irritating. She does this by making Toni a woman that one can admire for pulling herself out of teenage single parent poverty and forging a successful career. The side characters, in particular Toni's mother and her daughter, are also realistic and likable and add another dimension to the story.Toni's interaction with Detective Marciano is well crafted. Ms Warren allows the characters to get to know one another and for their relationship to develop at a natural pace.I will definitely be looking out for the second book in this series and for other books by this author. less

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