The Perfect Suitor by Cole Baxter
Genre: Psychological thriller
Read: 16th March 2022
Published: 16th March 2022
★★ 2 stars
DESCRIPTION:
Will he mend her broken heart? Or does he have a darker plan?
Three years after the tragic death of her wonderful husband, Charlene continues to mourn.
As she struggles to pick up the pieces of her shattered life, she meets Samuel. Handsome and educated, this charming man is the perfect suitor, and Charlene slowly lets her guard down and opens her heart to him.
But Samuel is not the man he appears to be. He has a dark compulsion. And an even darker secret.
When he begins acting strangely, Charlene suspects something is wrong. Her fears only grow when she notices she is being followed. Unsure whether she can really trust Samuel, Charlene takes matters into her own hands and starts to investigate.
What she finds is beyond her worst nightmares.
Will Charlene find the strength to confront the shocking truth before her life is shattered all over again?
The Perfect Suitor – the stunning psychological thriller perfect for fans of Mark Edwards, Cathryn Grant, Daniel Hurst.
MY REVIEW:
This is my first book by Cole Baxter and I have to say I wasn't enamoured by it. The premise promised something a little more intriguing than what was actually delivered. The first two thirds of the book or so reads more like a bad romance than a thriller and I really wasn't interested in Charlene's erotic dreams of fantasies about a man she had barely met...only to have them play out in reality a short time later. On repeat. Did I pick up a psychological thriller or a Mills and Boon? Sometimes I had to wonder.
To be honest, I found the book to be so badly written I wanted to give up by 30%...but I persevered because, after reading a couple other reviews, it was promised to get better with an ending to make up for the rest of it. I'm sorry to say, that was not the case. I predicted most of what was to come it was so blindingly obvious and usually predictability doesn't detract from my enjoyment, but coupled with everything else bad about this book, it was just another to add to the list of what was wrong with it.
I wanted to like this book. I stuck it out to the end in the hope that it did indeed get better. But the characters were all completely unlikeable. Charlene was so completely and stupidly naive and if she wasn't that then she was droning on and on about her dead husband and refusing to leave the house ever again. But then she just swapped her dependency on her grief for him to her lust for Samuel. And if that wasn't enough...the whole thing was just so completely drawn out it was ridiculous.
What promised to be an intriguing thriller was anything but, and I wish I had given up at 30% rather than lose sleep by continuing with it in the hope it got better. And if Charlene's actions weren't so naive or stupid throughout pretty much the entire book, then it is obvious that she learnt nothing from her experience by the end.
Sorry...I'm going to be brutally honest here, but my advice is to just move along, nothing to see here.
I would like to thank #ColeBaxter, #InkubatorBooks and #ZoolooTours for an ARC of #ThePerfectSuitor in exchange for an honest review.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
He grew up in New York, where there crime was all around. He decided to turn that into something positive with his fiction.
His stories will have you reading through the night—they are very addictive!
The Perfect Suitor is his first psychological thriller with Inkubator Books.
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