Review: Year of the Cat by Carroll Bryant

Title: Year of the Cat
Author: Carroll Bryant
Format: e-book (Kindle edition)
Read: Dec 9 - DNF
Rating: 1/5
Recommend: No

Summary: Lancaster Parks, an American Detective is sent to a tourist city in Mexico.  What exactly he's investigating is a string of deaths of male tourists over the past years.  The case he's on currently has 16 unsolved murders, all the victims American males and murdered between Spring Break and Memorial Day Weekend (the city's two biggest tourist times).  Oh, and there is this mysterious woman too.

Review: I am so usually not one to give into hype, drama or let other people's reviews color my opinion of a book.  So, up on receiving this book as a gift (which I usually do not turn down, but in this case I probably should have).

I could not even finish it, I have no desire to finish it.  Nor do I think any amount of money could make me finish this book. This author reminds me of Vizzini in <i>The Princess Bride</i> with his use of words improperly.

The on that made me giggle, seriously, was apparently the main character was going to spend "the next ions" of his life in the city he was transferred to in Mexico.  Dear Author, you are aware that the word that you should have used in that sentence was EONS.

Ions do not measure time.  Ions are an electrically charged atom, and is a term used in physics or chemistry.

Eons measure time.  They measure an indefinite amount of time.

So, your character would not be spending electrically charged atoms in a place, instead he would be spending eons (an indefinite amount of time) in the city in Mexico.

Then, there is this mystery woman.  I don't get entirely where she comes from (maybe I would if I finished the book) but to have her simply show up in this one mini flash back toward the beginning of the book is kind of disjointed and really doesn't make things flow nice and neatly in my opinion.

Anyway, that is my two cents and I bid you all a good day and happy reading.  Please do not bring your hate, drama and various other trivial things to my page.  I've now read the drama and the whirlwind of a shit storm that this book and the author has produced.  I do not want any part of it, and you will not hesitate to find yourself blocked, banned, or reported for bringing the drama here.

Shelving Choices: Do Not Read & Did Not Finish

Books come in all shapes and sizes. Good stories, bad stories, and in between stories. We’ve read them on our own, we’ve had to read them for school or various other reasons. Some we will read again, others we will never come near again unless we are desperate for something to read (and even then we may consider other sources before touching these books). I’ve noticed a trend of some people starting what is essentially called a Do-Not-Read list, and I was currently browsing a shelf with this particular title on a goodread user’s profile and several of the books on this shelf are on my to-read shelf and I’ve no intention of removing them from my to-read shelf (and I will read them eventually).


Beyond that, I do not understand why some of these books are on there. They are good books, they are best sellers and look very, very interesting. I have actually seen an author’s entire collection of stories on this shelf and it disturbs me to think that someone would slight an entire author for whatever reason. There is some drama with a NYT bestselling author over her husband calling a reviewer a psycho on an amazon.com review, and the various atomic bomb size fall out and drama that came with that, but other authors I don’t understand. Someone explain to me why you would blacklist all of an author’s work without any reason that I can think of?

Difference in opinion aside, what would make you shelve a book “Do Not Read” or “Did Not Finish”, or would you simply not do such a thing? I’ve one book that I’ve shelved “did not finish” or “abandoned” simply because I couldn’t get past some of the issues with it and my review reflected that. Beyond that, I’ve finished everything else I’ve been given to read, and ultimately I will not shelf a book “do not read” or “did not finish” unless there is a lot of problematic errors and issues with the writing style that I simply cannot get past. If your book drives me crazy (and not in an “OMG I LOVE THIS” type of way) it will be made known in my review, and ultimately in various shelving choices when I choose my options on goodreads.

Do you have books like this? Are they all in a specific genre or by a specific author? Inquiring blogger wants to know!