Advance Review Copy generously provided through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Ok, I feel mixed about this book! I read it all (never give up, especially with a book). Reading this book is like stay seated on a roller coaster!
2 stars

To make a long story short, I didn’t love this book. While the cover was cool and plot sounded enticing, it didn’t live up to expectations.

So, to start. Is there anything I liked about this book? Short answer: not much. I liked the idea of how, at the end, the suitcase of money kept traveling between various people. I liked how Alan and George reconnect as friends later on in the story. There’s a short section that takes place in hell, and the Satan character was amusing. There were also a few funny jokes, but they were far and few between. Surprisingly, there weren’t any plot holes.

Now, onto what I didn’t like.

To preface, this book was only available as an ebook, and based on the issues I had, part of them pertain to writing but other issues are most certainly due to the author likely self-publishing without an editor. There were a lot of obvious grammar/spelling errors, and the writing was clunky–something that could have been mostly fixed with usage of contractions. Additionally, sometimes swear words were censored and other times they weren’t–that was inconsistent writing that could have been edited. The narration was also irritating. The majority of the book was in third person, but occasionally a first person voice would pop in. It was clear that the writer intended that to be their voice, talking about the story, but it just came off as choppy and distracting. It wasn’t a good device for transition.

While the portion of the book that happened in hell was amusing, it wasn’t completely necessary–instead, it made the book seem unrealistic. In fact, I wish the writer had done more research. Madeline was a very unrealistic character for a nurse, and the parts of the book dealing with the stock market, investing, etc. weren’t well researched. They were written in a very general manner.

My final complaint was that nothing was fleshed out very well. None of the characters had enough characterization–they weren’t alive to me. They were like pieces of paper. They all had exactly one defining characteristic and nothing past that. They all spoke in the same “voice”. It was like each character pertained exactly to the stereotype for their location/race/ethnicity. All the gangsters were people of color…I would caution the author against negative stereotyping. The romance between Madeline and George also seemed fairly superficial and sudden–I wish it was fleshed out more, too.

Overall, I wasn’t a huge fan of this book. I finished it, so it wasn’t horrible, but it needs some editing to improve. Some simple editing and characterization would make it a more bearable read. It would also help if the writing was less juvenile and more artistic. As it is, though, I don’t recommend this.