Ever encounter a book that sounds like it’s amazing, but you don’t realize it’s part of a series until you put it into Goodreads?
That’s what happened when I picked up Killing Eva by Alex Blackmore.
When Eva Scott witnesses a man’s death at London’s Waterloo station she has no idea exactly what she is stepping into. With only a man’s dying word and ghosts from her past to go on, Eva embarks on an almost accidental adventure that takes her beyond England’s borders. The plot that unfolds involves a biotech firm with some really interesting technology concerning a genetic lock.
It’s a very gripping story that I wish we were able to get into the nuts and bolts of. While it is made very clear what the technology is supposed to do early on the exact function and the reasoning for its existence is never made clear. By the end of the book, I failed to see why any of the story mattered.
I don’t want to give anything away, because on the whole, it is a very interesting concept and I do like the idea of this thriller as a whole. I think most of my distaste can be accounted for by one simple fact.
Killing Eva is the second novel in the Eva Scott series. I picked this up not knowing that. The first book is called Lethal Profit, and in the first two chapters events are referenced. I am not sure you need to read Lethal Profit to understand exactly what happened, but it may help you get more insight into the characters.
Killing Eva started out strong. Within a chapter or two I was invested in Eva. I thought she was relatable and I really excited for the adventure we were about to be swept up in. But the excitement ends there for.
The first few chapters are gripping, but soon I became lost in a sea of faceless characters and evil villains. It was hard for me to tell when a particular passage was moving to another frame of reference. There is lack of physical description and some of the characters aren’t even named.
Without character description, I struggled to make sense of what was going on, who was speaking, and why they were after Eva. Sure the stakes were high, but without cause, the adversaries didn’t seem worthy enough.
By the end of the book I didn’t find Eva to be a particularly likeable character. She was a character swept in a conspiracy that no one would tell her about. Presumably, it was for her own protection, but I think all the secrecy fails her in the end. I didn’t find that there was a great climax and that Eva never really became a heroine I could look up to. In fact, it seemed like the entire purpose of the book was to strip away the automony a character.
Eva also had no background and no skills to draw on. She seems to be a victim of things that just happen to her. I didn’t look up the events of the first Eva Scott novel, but from the first few chapters, I got the impression that Eva was suffering from PTSD, something that never seems to be addressed by the author or Eva. Although the signs are there, Eva seems to just go about her life.
She refers to the events that happened in Paris a lot, but she never really engages about it and never makes an attempt to address it. By the middle of the book I found it very hard to care about Eva and I didn’t root for her one way or another.
Final Rating: 2 Stars
Killing Eva comes out June 1st. If you would like to purchase a copy of this book you can do so at your local independent bookseller.
If you want to read the series from the beginning, you can read more about Lethal Profit here.