“You’ve given us all a bad name, boyo. Your jail cell is a good place for you.”

The Books Of All Shades team are busy working through that long submission list and coming up with some awesome new ideas for the club behind the scenes. (Stay tuned!) However, the next book under the spotlight from me is one that I wasn’t particularly sold on by looking at the book cover alone, but as the saying goes – don’t judge a book by its cover. The contents of this one surprised me a bit and actually turned out to be better than expected.

Revenge Comes Calling by R.J. Rosatte is book one of the Katie and Malone Mysteries. In the prequel, Dark Side Of The Mountain, the pair recently worked together to solve a few problems and to save a truck load of people from being killed by a bomb. Now, Katie expects to be off to Casey’s mountainside retreat for little break and a romantic weekend, but little does she know that there is yet another plot about to unfold. She’ll need to put everything she’s learnt over the years into practice and stick with Casey to stay safe. Will the pair be heroes once again?

The beginning.

After an unexpected erotic start to the beginning of the book, (which, I’ll be honest, threw me off a little) the first chapter was pretty unique in the way it was set out. It gave a great insight into the lives of our two main characters; we have short, sharp paragraphs which describe how our characters are feeling and how they’re living day-to-day.

I’ve always loved reading a book from the point of view of more than one character. It was actually quite amusing to see how nervous Katie and Casey were behind the scenes, and how they both “hoped” the other liked dogs. As a huge dog person myself, (Golden Retrievers especially) I could relate to this statement…if someone doesn’t like dogs, what sort of a person are they?!

It’s not until chapter two that you get to know just who our characters are. They’ve recently “saved the world” in the words of Katie’s father, and I got the impression this novel was going to be very James Bond-esque. Casey playing the role of Bond, of course, where Katie plays something of a Bond girl. Well, I wasn’t far off.

We find out that previously, the pair had prevented a kidnapping and had stopped a bomb from exploding on a truck full of people. To me, the idea of this particular scene would have made some great reading and I felt like the reader may have missed out on some awesome action and problem solving. However, I soon came to realise that there was a prequel to this story. I think reading this particular book first would have given me a much better idea of their story.

Revenge Comes Calling is book one of the Katie and Malone Mysteries, and we don’t really see how Katie and Casey’s relationship started or developed, or how they got into their line of work. However, the mystery of it all and the little back story could definitely be seen as a positive, allowing the reader to put the pieces together themselves. Definitely look into the prequel before reading this particular series!

Katie must have taken some incredible self defence/karate/Taekwondo classes in her time (or, as we soon learn, some lessons from her well trained father) because in our first action scene, she’s all over the place dodging knife blades and the odd bullet. Some of the ways she fights seems a little unrealistic, but who’s saying she can’t be a badass with insane skills? We’re in a fictional world after all, and that’s all we see in any good action movie.

Throughout the beginning of the book, we’re told about Katie and Casey’s lives as well as that of a bunch of bad guys and a police officer. Again, a great use of different points of view. I really liked how we know there is some secret plot going on behind the scenes that our main characters need to uncover, told by a number of different characters throughout. We can sense the danger and from what we’ve experienced so far, it’s clear there’s more trouble ahead for our crime-fighting pair.

The middle.

The further we get into the story, the more characters we seem to be switching to. Now, as I said before, multiple points of view do work really well in my eyes, but to me, I felt like it got a little too much in parts.

There were the best part of 10 different characters all having their own slice of the action and getting involved in the telling of the story, and, to me, it felt like things were jumping around a lot. It seemed a little difficult to keep track of. Maybe focusing on a smaller circle of characters would have worked better here. We don’t need to know every single detail of every character – sometimes, the imagination is good at doing this for us!

Some scenes in the middle of the book were fully action-packed and well thought out. It seems the author of this book has fully researched the main points of a gun fight and a good old car chase to get the description and character actions spot on. I found it really easy to build up a picture of these scenes in my mind because of the small, intricate details. Definitely something you need in any book of this genre!

I did like how involving the story got and how much potential danger Katie and Casey were getting themselves in for. I do love a good crime-solving story line and a bit of danger here and there. The author of this book has ensured there is a good balance of the dangerous side of things and also the relationship between our two main characters. This balance is important as we need to get to know Katie and Casey’s characters emotionally to really become invested in their story.

The end.

It seems as though the more action going on in the story, the more points of view we need to witness. I’m not entirely sure this needs to be done, especially in so little words. For example, on one particular page, there were 3 different paragraphs from 3 different characters. The amount of switching between different characters was making me strangely dizzy! I’ve not seen this in a novel before, and I’m not really sold on its effectiveness.

However, chapter nine’s ambush and fighting scene was a great one after all the characters had their say. The only downside was that we seem to be straying away from our two main characters and spending too much time describing that of other less important characters. We do follow the main characters a lot, but it does seem to be much less than you would expect in your average novel.

I liked the fact that even when Katie and Casey’s ordeal was over, there was still some strange goings on behind the scenes that they were unaware of. They were still in danger, even though they weren’t aware of it! However, it just sort of…ended, and ended very abruptly at that. One minute, there’s a man with a gun. Next, Katie and Casey are as happy as can be. Not the ending I expected, but maybe one that can be transitioned into book two somehow.

I do think the ending could have been something more, but maybe there’s been enough action for our main characters for one book! I’m sure book two will be just as energetic.

Overall thoughts..

I found Revenge Comes Calling relatively easy to get into despite the book cover – in my eyes, it isn’t something that would make me stop and think, “This book looks incredible, I need to read it!” Instead, it looks a little amateur. Maybe investing in a book cover design of a higher quality would be great for this novel. Something that would catch the eye and make someone eager to find out more. I think it would definitely get more interest this way.

The story itself is certainly one to consider for fans of action and mystery. I found it enjoyable and something that I could jump back into after a couple of days without losing track. I’d perhaps rethink the amount of characters that are focused on here to make it more digestible, but overall, a pleasant read!

Thanks to R.J. Rosatte for submitting his book for our club to read and review! You can purchase a copy of Revenge Comes Calling over on Amazon, available on Kindle or paperback 📚 Follow R.J. Rosatte over on Twitter to keep up to date!

Do you want an honest book review?

Aha, you found the right person! Our book club is currently open to submissions. Simply choose your book review package and send an email with your request to booksofallshades@gmail.com. The sooner you get in touch, the sooner we can get you on our review list!