Book Review - The Making of Gabriel Davenport

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This is me all cuddled up at night in my blanket.  Night is the most exciting time to read this book, trust me.  Bonus points if there's a storm raging outside.

This is me all cuddled up at night in my blanket.  Night is the most exciting time to read this book, trust me.  Bonus points if there's a storm raging outside.

Star Rating: 5/5
Genre: Suspense, Supernatural Thriller
Buy the book: Amazon

There are lots of magical things about reading books.  A new one I've recently discovered is what it can reveal about ourselves as book buyers.  While reading The Making of Gabriel Davenport, I realized I have a fairly limited scope of book types that I buy and read.  Why?  Because of the way the Amazon recommendation algorithm works?  Because that's what I've always read and kind of fell into a pattern?  Who knows?  This book, though, I can tell is the first to start breaking me out of my pattern.  See, I've I've started buying and reading books from some of my fellow indie authors, focusing less on the genre and just diving in without overthinking it like I usually do or focusing on a specific sub-sub-genre.

Pro-tip for life: support one another, you guys, in whatever it is that you do.  When we support one another, we can all be stronger.

Beverly Lee was running a special on the Kindle version of this, her first book, on Amazon, so I figured I'd go ahead and grab it.

Let's talk about formulas for a second.  In the writing world, they definitely exist.  Whether or not that's a good thing is up for debate, but it is a reality.  I have read numerous writing advice articles that specifically say something along the lines of, "Start your book off with a bang!  If your beginning doesn't have some kind of action, move an action-y bit to the beginning to create a teaser and then proceed with your slower start."  I've seen this done, and I don't dislike it.  It's not a bad method.  What I do dislike is anyone saying there's only one way to do something well.  That's when things become boring and formulaic.

I cannot tell you how much I appreciate that Beverly Lee didn't do this.  Don't get me wrong, there are some delicious teases in the beginning, whispers of intrigue that made me go, "Whaaaaat is it?  Something...something bad is gonna happen."  It's a subtle hook that catches you without you realizing it.  Rather, she takes times to craft and establish her characters and, more than that, makes them sympathetic.  I found myself getting attached to each character very organically.  Little gestures between the characters tell tales about their relationship without, you know, outright telling you those little tales.  And this is so, so good because later on ***CENSORED FOR SPOILERS!!!***  Oopsie.  Guess you don't get to know unless you read the book. 0:-)

This book did that amazing, addict-making thing where I was slipping in reads between when I was supposed to be doing silly things like chores and responsibilities.  I needed to know what happened next.  Let me just say, there's more than moment where my eyes got real big and I just thought, "Oh, dang...this crap just got real." o.0

The second one is coming out soon, you guys, and available for preorder now.  I'm so excited because, once again, I need to know what happens!  Eek!!!  I fully recommend this one, folks.  No matter what your preferred genre is, this is a great one!