Schooled

tags: Kindle First, unfunny

⭐

From Goodreads

Jack Parker didn’t set out to be a stay-at-home dad, but his professional dreams went up in smoke after he accidentally burned down his office building.Six years later, Jack’s got parenting his two kids down cold.

Then comes an unwelcome blast from Jack’s past: high school nemesis Chad Henson. He beat out Jack for class president, stole his girlfriend, and never had so much as a pimple in his four years of adolescent bliss. Now Chad has moved to the same midwestern town Jack calls home.

When Jack learns Chad is running for president of his daughter’s school board, he decides to run to settle old scores.But parent politics prove more cutthroat than Jack could have imagined, and he’s facing unexpected challenges in his marriage, too, forcing him to question his role in the family. Suddenly, the election is about more than Jack’s past. It’s an opportunity to discover the person he wants to become.

People grow up, but some high school rivalries never die. It’s time Chad Henson got schooled once and for all—and for Jack to learn a few things of his own.

False advertisement by Amazon Kindle First...again. Supposed to be funny and relatable. Big NO! What is funny about burning down your place of work because of negligence, heating pizza in the microwave on a piece of aluminum foil and leaving it to go to the parking lot??? This stupidity is on the very early part of the book and the reason he lost his job and eventually becomes a stay-at-home dad. At the playground, his daughter loses her underwear to a squirrel yet he is not concerned and continues talking to a former classmate and bully, the antagonist Chad. I skimmed through but finished the darned book because I'm a masochist and because I want to give it the least star on Goodreads.

Recommended for masochists.

The Mentor

 mystery, police procedural, revenge

 

GoodReads

As Scotland Yard chief forensics detective Eric Shaw works a case with some resemblance to a crime he investigated twenty years earlier, he is convinced it is just a coincidence. But when more deaths occur in a style similar to those killings from the past, Shaw suspects that he has a serial killer on his hands—one who is pursuing a personal, cold-blooded vendetta.

Working closely with his protégée, Detective Miriam Leroux, Shaw analyzes the crimes down to the finest detail. He finds himself increasingly drawn to the lab, where criminologist Adele Pennington, a beautiful, enigmatic woman more than two decades his junior, proves distracting. Determined to maintain his professionalism despite the attraction, Shaw struggles to keep her at arm’s length. Yet Pennington’s unique insight proves critical, and as the investigation develops, so does their personal connection. With a killer on the loose, Shaw must follow a winding, blood-soaked trail that will take him in an unexpected and terrifying direction.  

The short mystery novel is one of six Amazon Kindle First choices for October 2015. The book will be officially issued on November 2015. It is originally written in Italian and may have lost something in translation into English. It has a very high average rating (mostly by Italians and the author herself???) on GoodReads and once again, I'm in the minority.

The reasons for my 1-star rating
>main character is not believable as a Scotland Yard chief forensics detective; he's too emotional and weak; he acts more like a new recruit instead of a seasoned tough detective who has seen many crime scenes

• Eric couldn't stop staring at the corpse. He found it magnetic...He realized he was hyperventilating.
• He (Eric) forced himself to breathe, in and out, in and out. He struggled to calm himself down. Losing control now wouldn't help him.

>serial killer is obvious: "hey, I'm the one you're looking for" is tattooed on forehead
>amateurish writing - meanders and reads like a movie script...oh no, not again...*SMH*
>murder-mystery and romance never go together well...ever...specially between a 49 year-old super and his 27 year-old subordinate. It's just icky.

I do not recommend the book.