Story for the Week
Every book has an ending. I know that. You get to the last page, close the book, and move on to the next. But I really want books to have a conclusion. I don’t want any loose ends. I don’t like a cliffhanger.
A lot of television series air a winter finale (which didn’t used to be a thing…story for another day) several months before their season finale going into the summer. Inevitably, they end in a cliffhanger. Does it make me shout, “Nooooooo!” at the television? Sometimes. Frequently. But the difference there is that when the next episode airs, I can re-watch the previous episode, usually in less than an hour. And there’s always a “previously on…” whatever show it happens to be.
I don’t want to do that with a book. I don’t want to re-read 300+ pages to refresh my memory before the next book in the series. And if there are six months between release dates, I’ve probably read two dozen books between them. I won’t remember the main characters’ names, let alone any of the relevant plot points. And I know plenty of people who read a lot more books than I do in one year.
Don’t get me wrong, a great series can be amazing. Last week, I reviewed the final book of The Wishing Tree Series (A Murder Mystery in Linden Falls? 😲), and I thoroughly enjoyed my journey through Linden Falls. The difference there is that the “preview” book (#1) released a month before books 2-7, which were all released a week apart. Books 8-13 released beginning in September. And here’s the biggest difference: Every book in the series was a stand-alone. Sure, some of the characters appeared throughout the series or carried over from one book to another. But you can read just one, and you won’t be left hanging. There are no cliffhangers in Linden Falls, and I am grateful for that.
If I do come across a good review of a book that’s part of a series, I will typically make sure that all the books have been released or that each book is a stand-alone before I start the first one. Why? Because I know myself, and I know I won’t go back.
My daughter? She’s been reading the Wings of Fire series since grade school. The first book released in 2012, and the reading level is ages 8-12. The final book in the series (#15) came out in April 2022. She has invested 10 years, more than half of her life, on these books (and she is several years over age 12). But she’s in it. She will finish them. She doesn’t read nearly as many books as I do, but still…10 years.
I first reviewed the book below in June of 2019. It was the first of the series, but since it was an advance reader copy, I didn’t know that it was going to end in a cliffhanger. The second book was released a couple of months after I reviewed the first, but the final book in the series wasn’t released until nine months later…more than a full year after the first. I didn’t even consider reading the second book because I knew that it would sit until the third book came out and I would have to re-read the first book. And there are very few books that I have ever chosen to re-read. Life is too short, and there are just too many to choose from.
The first book in this series was definitely worth picking up, and I would recommend getting the full series and just reading them back to back. I will go back to this author…and it will be after checking reviews for a whole series at once.
Book Review
⭐⭐⭐⭐
4 Stars for Every Last Breath (Final Hour #1) by Juno Rushdan
479 pages
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Publication Date: April 30, 2019
I originally received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Sourcebooks Casablanca in exchange for an honest review.
Publisher’s Description
The clock is ticking:
- 48 hours
- 2 covert operatives
- 1 chance to get it right
Maddox Kinkade is an expert at managing the impossible. Tasked with neutralizing a lethal bioweapon, she turns to the one person capable of helping her stop the threat in time: the love of her life, back from the dead and mad as hell at her supposed betrayal. Recruiting Cole to save millions of lives may be harder than resisting the attraction still burning between them, but Maddox will do whatever it takes, down to her final breath…even if it destroys her.
When Maddox crashes back into Cole Matthews’s life, he wants to fight back. He wants to hate her. But the crisis is too strong to ignore, and soon the two former lovers find themselves working side-by-side in a breakneck race to stop a world-class killer with a secret that could end everything.
************
I really enjoyed Every Last Breath by Juno Rushdan. The interaction between the primary characters, Maddox and Cole, and the way the story built up, was exciting and kept the pages turning. The fact that the characters were under a time crunch to find and neutralize a lethal bioweapon really necessitated a fast-paced narrative, so I was pleased that the author was able to create that feeling of urgency.
Maddox was completely believable as an elite operative for a covert government agency—i.e., she’s a badass. We can appreciate how hard she worked (and still works) to prove herself and that she wasn’t willing to let anyone compromise her reputation, even the man she loved 10 years ago who she assumed was dead until this threat started to unfold. All in all, this was a solid stand-alone story, but what brings it to 4 stars is that it is not a stand-alone book.
I have read a number of books that are pitched as part of a series. Expected when reading the first of a series is a lot of secondary characters who are introduced and referenced a couple of times throughout a story but otherwise don’t have any relevant impact. We expect to get more of their stories in the rest of the series, but we know going in that we’ll meet a lot of people who aren’t necessarily critical to the resolution of this story. This isn’t problematic for me.
What I didn’t like in this case was that there was a key plot element in this book that was not resolved at the end of the book and I assume was resolved by the end of the series. More often than not, I do not read a series in its entirety without a break between books. Book 2 of this series was released four months after the first, and the final book in the series was released a full nine months after the second.
As an avid reader, I read a lot of books in a year, and all of the hints about this plot element from the first book would be long-distant memories by the time I read the third book. I don’t want to have to spend time trying to remember what I read in the first book (or leafing through the first two books—who has time for that?) by the time I read the last book. I read books like this for enjoyment. I don’t want to have to work to remember what I read a dozen or more books ago. This isn’t like a TV series where you get a review of what happened in the previous episode.
The only other thing that struck me as a little off was that Maddox and Cole sound a little too sappy sometimes. They were both strong, tough characters, and I’m not saying that tough characters can’t have a softer side, but in this case, it just didn’t sound authentic. This was a minor detail that does not take away from the overall enjoyment of the book. It’s just something that gave me pause.
All in all, this is definitely worth picking up…with the last two books in the series. 😉
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