Deadly to My Brain

Published:  September 2nd, 2011

Deadly.com

By: Cindy McDonald

Createspace

ISBN-13:  9781463647193

The novel is the first in a series about the West family, proprietors of Westwood Thoroughbred Farm, and their friends and associates in the world of horse racing. Socially awkward George gives everyone at the racetrack a creepy feeling and is avoided by all. But he uses an online portal to create a very different alternate identity to romance a multitude of attractive women including Kate West and her brother's ex-wife, Ava. When Mike West is forced to fire George, frustration and jealousy combine to make the voices in the jockey agent's head unbearable. Soon people start turning up dead and the path of destruction leads right to the West family home.

Review

     Kate West hasn't had much luck with lasting relationships and love.  So, she decides to give in to cultural pressure and join a social networking/dating website to find her Mr. Right.  What she is unaware of is that George, a very socially awkward jockey agent, is obsessed with her and pretending to be someone else to catch her interest on the site.  But when he asks Kate out while working with his jockey at the ranch and she denies him, obsession turns deadly very fast.  When George is fired by Kate's brother Mike and spurned by Mike's ex-wife Ava, he has a full-on psychotic break with reality.  When people begin to die, can Kate and Mike find a way to survive the greatest chaos they've ever faced?  I had my doubts to begin with, as this is basically self-published and it's a very cliched subject matter.  However, it sounded like it could be a fresh, exciting take on an old plot line.  So I gave it a shot.  I wish that I had never wasted the space on my Kindle for this supposed piece of literature.  It got off to an okay start, but it just disappeared when the characters really got going with their stupidity.  It read like a very badly written soap opera, with bumbling police officers and one-dimensional characters.  The most complex character was George (the psychopathic killer) and even he seemed like a badly reconstructed rip-off of other creations in past literature.  Kate and Mike were stupid, annoying and completely unpalatable   Every time they started to show some sense, they completely negated it by saying or doing something utterly inexcusable for a mature adult.  Ava was a waste of space and served only as a plot point, to move things along.  All I wanted was for the book to be over and it seemed like the author dragged out the murder plot twice as long as she needed to.  It had a completely ridiculous ending and if it had been a print book I would have thrown it against the wall.  I will never subject myself to this sort of torture again.  NEVER.  

VERDICT:  1/5  Stars

*I received an Advanced Reading E-book Copy from the publisher, via NetGalley. No money or favors were exchanged for this review. This book was published September 2nd, 2011.*