Featured books

Featured Websites

.: Reader Views Kids

Provides book reviews, by kids, for kids

.: Inside Scoop Live

Provides live author interviews for podcast

.: Authors Access

Provides interviews with experts in the publishing industry

.: Midwest Book Review

Provides post-publication reviews

.: Reader Views

Provides book reviews and author publicity

.: LR Communication Design

Provides professional website design and development

.: Blogging Authors

Provides a place where writers and readers meet

.: Review The Book

Provides 5 books reviews on 10 different sites

.: Best Sellers World

Provides book reviews and author features

.: Feathered Quill Book Reviews

Provides book reviews and author features

reviews

Merryll Manning: Trapped on Mystery Island

John Howard Reid
Lulu Press, Inc (2008)
ISBN 9781435720855
Reviewed by Melissa Koltes for RebeccasReads (06/10)


Police Sergeant Merryll Manning, along with his girlfriend Susan Ford, enters a mystery weekend contest on a secluded island.  But the weekend is far from being a fun who-dun-it.  Instead, a real murder takes place and the cast of characters must figure out who the murderer is before anyone else dies.

This is a very well thought out book that never really lets you figure out who the murderer is till the end.  The story has great excitement and lively characters.  However, it feels as though there are too many characters and too many that aren’t who they say they are.  This leads to quite a bit of rereading to figure out exactly what is happening and to whom. 

Some of the characters are so aggravating and obnoxious that at times I wanted to skip ahead just to avoid them. These, for the most part, are fleeting and only bog down the story for a short while.  There were also a few too many conversations where the main character simply wanted to annoy the other characters and although very relevant to the story; did not sit well with me as a reader.  There were however, characters that were and a connection can be made between the reader and the character themselves. 

I thoroughly enjoyed the suspense and the intrigue of this book and look forward to reading others in the series.