One way I like to find new authors and books I might not otherwise read is to get free Nook books and then check out the “people also bought” selections for the ones I like. It works most of the time. In fact the biggest problem is the sheer number of free Nook books available! When I shop via my Nook and search by price, the second sort criteria is title and there are so many that I’ve never gotten past the free books with titles starting with “A”.
I don’t remember how I found Images Of Betrayal by Claire Collins (which is not free) and I wasn’t sure what I was getting. The blurb says “He possesses the remarkable ability to take photographs of events that have not yet happened.” Will this be fantasy? Science fiction? Suspense? Or? The Amazon blurb hints it’s not a fantasy about a guy who really can photograph the future: “Walker-her apparent savior, David-her new admirer”. Kinda gives it away a bit; it’s Photoshop, not a time machine.
Plot and Characters
Tysan is 17 years old and the left behind kid from her parents’ divorce. Her mom got custody of the four younger kids and her Dad got her. Unfortunately Dad forgot about earning a living, paying bills and has neither interest nor intention to take care of Tysan. In fact Dad left and left Tysan behind. She dropped out of school to wait tables to pay the bills and working the day shift at a steakhouse she can barely make enough to stay alive.
Enter Walker, a guy in his 20s, who chats up Tysan at the restaurant and shows her some photos he took of her that show people she knows, situations she has been in, and photos he claims are of the future. The future is horrifying, showing Tysan horribly burnt. Walker asks Tysan to come to his home the day that the fire is supposed to occur. Indeed, the restaurant explodes, a couple people are killed, Tysan’s friend Sheila is hurt. She leaves Walker’s home and goes back to her own apartment terrified, shaken and now jobless.
Sheila is kind and generous and knows well that Tysan is barely able to keep her apartment. Sh asks Tysan to come stay with her family for a while, at least until she finds another job. Tysan and Sheila’s popular, 18 year old son David soon are on the edge of an affair. That’s as much as I can say without spoiling the book for you.
The characters are moderately well done. Tysan’s conversation is authentic and her relationship with her sister feels real. Her parents are monumentally selfish, but believable too. Sheila, Mike and David are a little less believable and Walker is only sketched in.
The Good Parts
Tysan was so convinced by Walker that we readers are almost convinced too, at least enough to get into the story and go along with it. Images Of Betrayal is fast moving, with enough suspense and creepiness to engage.
The Bad Parts
What parent in their right mind would think it was a good idea to let their teenaged son and their almost foster daughter play house in the basement? I know lots of kids indulge in sex and lots of people don’t see anything wrong with it, but any parent who thinks it’s a great idea and encourages their kids has rocks in their heads. Kids, especially naive vulnerable 17 year old girls who have been abandoned by their families, do not have great judgement and if you add sex to already heightened emotions, plus the hormonal stew pot, you are setting that girl up for misery. How many teens stay happily in love with the same person from age 17 forever? And how hard would it be for that girl to break up if she should decide to do so?
Yet this is what Sheila and Mike do at the end when they offer Tysan a home and offer to fix up the basement for her and David to share as their own home. This is the romantic equivalent of buying the booze for your kids to have a big drinking party.
4 Stars except for the ending
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