ARC Review: By the Book by GB Gordon
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
Horse rating: 0 out of 5 horses
ARC difficulty: foothill
Expected publication: June 14th, 2022
DNF at 29%
I am strangely mad about how much of a disappointment this was. I tried really hard to keep reading but I had to tap out.
I am fine with suspending disbelief for reading romance books, I wouldn’t be able to read so many otherwise. But even then, there are limits. This book far surpasses any ability to suspend disbelief because it is just so wrong on all counts. I expect at least TV show level realism, you know? The bar isn't very high.
Characters
Ben: Ben is a total dumbass (derogatory). The narration tries to build him up as smart, confident, something, but what’s shown is someone with no critical thinking and is a doormat. The mismatch is painful. If he were just supposed to be a wildly naive soggy breadcrumb of a person, that’s one thing. But the other MC says he’s smart, clever, Ben himself thinks things he would never have confidence to do…
Ben also has a totally mysterious background to me, through this first third. Not in a good way. I don’t know where he comes from, what his family is like, and the context clues were distractingly vague. He feels like he’s existing in a weird vacuum of details. I don’t need his pedigree or massive infodumping, but give me something beyond a short phone call with his mom. Maybe I didn’t make it far enough?
Nick: Nick just didn’t make much sense to me. He’s a forty year old partyboy who’s also in the FBI, and has no friends because he sucks as a person. He sucks because he constantly hits on his married, straight partner “as a challenge” and also tries to provoke fights because he is a hungover waste of space. Am I supposed to feel bad for little rich boy going on two day benders mid murder case at age 40? I sure don’t.
Plot
What even is the FBI doing? This isn’t how it works. Even with my normal levels of disbelief suspension for romance novels, it’s baffling. What’s the point of having a partner if you don’t do anything with said partner? Nick is always wandering off alone. And like never checks in with the boss-person? Whoever it might be? This is something that I feel like shows up casually in any law enforcement book, but this one he’s just roaming free. It really lessened the FBI/law enforcement vibes of the whole thing, making it feel like its just two random dudes doing dumb shit.
And then!!! Ben is the one who found an executed dude, with shady files, and then…they just let him pop into forensic accounting department to help out immediately. NO
There isn’t much plot otherwise at this point. Just Ben being a colossal dipshit (“the head of my accounting office will be so happy I’m categorizing all these weird monetary things!!! Definitely unrelated to the last dude who brought it up and got promptly executed and then fbi showed up and implied they weren’t mistakes and also the murder was a hit”) so I’m sure there’s a lot more dumbassery to look forward to.
Plus Ben hiding things from the FBI (which a. illegal, b. dumb, c. the FBI should be able to find this small beans bullshit themselves so what’s the point)
Accounting
I wanted to call this out, specifically. I buddy read (sort of, we tried okay) this with an accountant friend, and wow every single aspect of this is just wrong. The entire premise is wrong, right off the start, and I’m just gonna quote them so I don’t mess it up (as a non-accountant):
Ben finds that the bank account doesn't match net income. This is not an exercise an accountant would perform. No one tries to trace on to the other. And why? Because it's almost impossible for the bank balance to match net income. That's not how accounting works. That would raise zero red flags, even to the most dedicated forensic accountant. There's a lot more that's wrong, but like, for the whole premise of the book to be wrong really grates.
Check out madigans review here for the Real Accounting Words
Even to me, the accounting details seemed wrong, which says a lot. It’s like they watched an episode of Ozark. (I have seen half an episode of Ozark and feel confident this is an accurate comparison)
Romance
lolololol
what romance
This is pure instalust. Telling me they have chemistry does not make them have it. They absolutely do not have any chemistry.
His wrist touched Coyne’s knuckles and they both flinched. Hot damn! Coyne stared at Nick as if he’d been struck by lightning. His eyes widened at whatever he saw in Nick’s. Nick had the feeling some telepathic message was passing between them,
Every single one of their interactions had some level of this, brain frying “electric” connections instead of actual, human connections through conversation or shared experiences.
Maybe there’ll be romance in the second book? Someone can tell me later. Or not. Please don’t.
The writing
The author tells us things in character POV that are not supported by what’s actually shown on page. The most ridiculous one to me was all the times Ben is said to be confident, and yet every time his leech of an ex shows up, he gives him like a hundred dollars, several times. confident doormat!
Purple prose….attempts: there were attempts to be poetic and descriptive I think, mostly were baffling and just excess words for random stuff. Like a duck, sitting on a path. Leave the duck out of this! It made me have to double back to reread things to figure out what was going on.
Random fellow kids slang(?): far from the first author to try this, but some things are not meant to be in a book. This is a mild one:
His sleep-deprived body had been catching up on zzzs with a vengeance.
zzz’s? just say he’s been crashing or his body is demanding sleep. These small things really build up over time.
At one point the super wealthy father in his 60’s says “true that”.
…no he wouldn’t.
Miscellanies
1. This is set in Boston, I guess. I kept forgetting, because I could barely remember they were in a city at all, as the location didn’t seem to matter. The T is mentioned - I take it this is the subway system in Boston, which could have used a one line clarification for all the readers in the world not in Boston. Little details like this are tiring.
2. Ben kisses Nick and Nick asks him to stop because kissing is tampering of evidence under "Title 18, US Code, Section 1512" and that means Sullivan, the boss, could get away with the crime.
First of all, this is ridiculous. Second of all, I have been assured by a lawyer friend (i’m so popular with my smart friends) that people who regularly refer to US Code sections never say it this way. It's always 18 USC section 1512. So if you’re gonna refer to the legal code of witness tampering, at least do it correctly. It's the overall interaction with the person that would be tampering, not "did you kiss, y/n”
3. i definitely had another thing. might have been all the illegal shit ben is doing. or the ham handed references for future stuff (i assume, i will not find out if archery matters) or Trauma Past (someone died idgaf)
Overall, this was a miss on all accounts. There is no romance, no suspense, nothing to recommend it in the slightest. I do not connect with or care about the characters, or the plot.
I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All the opinions are my own.
Comments
Post a Comment