Books like Cold Day In July

started on May 2This book sucked. After just finishing it and witnessing that colossal failure of an ending, I’m so mad I don’t even want to do the review. The book sucked literally from the first page to the last, but after the way it ended I can honestly say there wasn't a single good thing about it. It was a huge piece of crap and I’m shocked someone dreamt up such a disgustingly twisted story with truly stupid characters. I’d be ashamed to create something like this.The writing was boring and awful and it was impossible to keep track of all the characters. She introduced way too many people too soon, and throughout the book I had trouble remembering everyone. I didn’t even know who was being talked about most of the time, and that really took away from the story, what little there was.The book could have really benefited from some editing. There were quite a few mistakes and they were distracting and glaring. She couldn’t remember how she spelled her own character’s name. One paragraph she slipped up and spelled Marc as Mark. I thought she was talking about someone else. That was a pretty bad mistake to make. Also, Chauncey “did a Basset House imitation with his eyes.” I think that’s supposed to be Basset Hound, unless there’s such a thing as Basset House that you can do with your eyes that I haven’t heard of. These are really dumb mistakes to make. There were so many grammatical errors too. For example, so many times, too many to count, the author would not use a question mark after asking a question, not sure the thought behind that blunder but a major blunder it is. Ex: “What’s wrong with the idea of not looking for it.” That’s not even hypothetical, so you can’t get away without using a question mark. Rule: You have to use a question mark if you’re asking a question. And sentences that start with what end in a question mark. “Would you consider taking in a second one.” Again, no question mark. Ugh!This is a sample of the weird/confusing thinking of the author. “His heart plummeted into his loafers, only he wasn’t wearing shoes.” ….so why didn’t you just say his heart plummeted into his feet? That doesn’t even make sense. Reb has a mental disorder, that’s the only explanation for her behavior. I was ashamed to be a woman in that moment when Marc stays at her house after someone attacked her from the closet. She goes back and forth, contradicts herself, and changes her mind between one second and the next. She keeps telling him to leave, but he talks his way out of it and kisses her. He asks if she wants to stop, and she says no with certainty. I think they’re gonna do it, but she starts protesting and insists they slow down and set the pace. Then she proceeds to massage him. During the massage she kisses him, bites his ears, and rubs her breasts on his back. Then she undoes his jeans and handles his penis. He makes a comment that he feels like they’ve never been separated and it’s so natural, and she just up and says if it’s meant to be then they’ll be okay to wait. She moves away and wraps herself in a throw. She says she doesn’t need to stay there with her. He asks for a pillow, and she takes her nightgown off, pushes him to the floor and straddles him. Then she says if you don’t want to have sex with me now I’ll understand. WTF?!?! That is so freakin stupid. When he reminds her she said they had to take things slow, she spouts out that she changed her mind and women can do that, and she likes danger. She sits on his crotch, then says I hope I haven’t ruined a chance at friendship, I like you so much, and starts to move away again. Those are some strong mixed signals, as in she’s crazy.Early on, way too soon, Marc realizes he loves her after only being together for a couple days. That was so utterly ridiculous. I hate when authors rush love, when there’s no reason to. I like a story to be more believable. Marc starts bragging and praising himself, which was a total turnoff. He says he’s different from the rest of the males, and they only made one like him. And he isn’t even joking about it either. Who talks about theirself like that? That was so egotistical. I HATED that Marc had touched Precious’ boobs when they were younger. That was so disgusting. And Reb wasn’t hurt or jealous at all, she just seemed amused. Go figure.The writing was so hard to follow, it was so confusing. I had so much trouble trying to follow the author’s train of thought. The conversations were all over the place. Let me give you the scene that really grated on my nerves:“Reb saw no sign that he was joking, but he had to be. He looked serious. She had been breathing through her open mouth. She shut it and straightened up. Let him see whatever he could through the nightie—she wasn’t above throwing a rope to a drowning man. Frustrated was the word that came to mind.”“She sat, cross-legged, on the rug and swung the throw around her shoulders.Only one thing would relax him, and it didn’t look as if he was going to get it. “Are you cold?” he said, taking a place beside her.“Not really, but creating the illusion comforts me.”Well son-of-a-gun, making her feel good was his job now. She’d been the one to decide they should go slowly, but she hadn’t mentioned that “slow” meant “stop,” or pretty near.She leaned on him and patted his back. “Being here with you, just the way we are, is perfect. Forgive me for getting a bit pushy just now.”He didn’t trust himself to look at her. “You weren’t pushy, you were very, very nice. I’ve ruined your evening and put out big time.”“Not a bit of it.”Not a bit of it was right as far as she was concerned, Marc thought, she’d lost her nerve at the last moment, and he was the one who’d been put out, big time.”“They were both breathing hard when Marc took his kisses on the road. He pressed his mouth to her jaw, her neck and arms, stomach and thighs. And all the time she reached for him—to no avail, because he might be a big man but he was also swift, and determined. He was a man who didn’t have to have a woman in his life all the time. The hunt was the biggie, especially when he got close to running his quarry to earth. He could wait as long as it took to see Reb across the breakfast table—his table.For a man who prided himself on dealing in absolutes, he must have had a frontal lobotomy in his sleep, and he’d lost control over speech.The first round was his? Great, this should take the frost off the pumpkin.”WHAT? Could you possibly throw any more disjointed thoughts into that melee? I don’t think you’ve confused your readers enough.The author can’t write it’s as simple as that. It’s like ADHD in writing. It’s like a ball bouncing all over the place, thoughts don’t flow together, she isn’t making any sense, and it’s just awful. This is the worst writing I’ve ever read.Reb kept commenting so many times that Cyrus, Spike and her knew that Bonnie wasn’t Amy, Marc’s sister, but they never would tell Marc how they knew that. They just let him think it was his sister, going on with the exhumation of the body, and going along with the theory that they needed the purse to see if they were Amy’s belongings. And Reb said that she had found a picture of a man and a baby but “could not speak of it” and that Spike could make the decision if it should be shared or not. WTF?! That is SO irritating. Who cares about a dead woman’s privacy? She’s dead! She just would not tell Marc she knew Bonnie wasn’t his sister. That’s like saying I know that’s poison ivy but I’m going to let them run right into it because they think it isn’t, and let them find out the hard way. You could save someone a lot of trouble and pain if you just tell the truth in the beginning and stop it from happening. And now on to that atrocity of an ending. It turns out Oribel or whatever that psycho lady that worked with Cyrus is called, had the body moved, and was the Rubber Killer, great name by the way for the town killer, and killed all the woman that had anything to do with Cyrus. I guess it was because she was old fashioned and really promoted chastity with the priest and didn’t like any woman being around him…okay. I suspected her before that because she was a psycho, but then the author, true to herself, makes things more confusing and complicated by weaving in Chauncey, Precious, Amy, Pepper Leach or whatever, and May Lynn or however you spell that, into the whole mix. Amy was sleeping with Precious’s husband, found out about his bad car business, and so Chauncey wanted to kill her, hired Dante to do it, who slept with Precious. May Lynn saw Pepper, thought he wanted her, and almost raped him, then called the law on him saying that he tried to rape her. He went to jail for a crime he didn’t commit. Precious forgives Amy, Amy runs away…and some crap happens that I don’t care about. Those things really didn’t go together and I’m still confused about a lot. We end off right after they subdue Oribel or whatever, and we aren’t even afforded a lighthearted scene with just Reb and Marc, which wouldn’t have redeemed the book anyway, but would have made it a better point to end off of. It turns out Cyrus was seduced by the women, or Oribel thought he was, and he was the father of Bonnie’s baby…Madge looked at him sadly and that was the end of that, literally because the author just stopped there without wrapping anything else up. We don’t know where Amy was, when she meets Marc, what they say to each other, or anything. I’m more mad about Cyrus and Bonnie than anything. He has feelings for Madge and she has feelings for him, but they couldn’t even talk about their personal feelings for each other because he’s a priest…but he slept with another woman and got her pregnant. Screw this book, this story, the awful characters, the whole piece of crap. I’m so mad when I think of all the time I wasted on this drivel. I’m never reading anything by this author again. It’ll be a cold day in July before I ever do. I haven't read many other books deserving of one star.