Winter by C.B. Cole

Synopsis from GoodReads:

Winter doesn’t know it yet, but once she steps into the amphitheater to see the biggest rock show of the year, she will set into motion a whirlwind of events beyond her control. She will soon learn that her entire life has been a carefully crafted lie and that she will have to make a choice that will not only impact her life, but also the lives of everyone around her.
Will she be able to choose between what she wants and what she knows is right?


I really wanted to like this book since it is my first Indie book review and since I did publicly announce it. (Lesson learned. Don't anounce till I've actually read it.)

Unfortunetly, when searching for books to start this endeavor I was more concerned with the criteria I'd set for myself and less focused on finding the type of books I would like to read. Which is stupid, I admit.

I also have to admit, though I hate to, I didn't finish the book. It just didn't work for me and upon reaching chapter fourteen, I admitted defeat. It is probably a book that many will like. For me though, I just couldn't get behind any of the characters, and that is partially because of the way the author handled POV. (for those non-writer types that is point of view).

She jumped around from character to character, rather than sticking with just one. And for many readers this is welcomed. For me, not so much. To me, it's like the Wal-Mart of POV, a large selection but not enough quality to choose from. That's not to say the writing is of low quality but the time spent with each character isn't enough for me to identify with any of them, or even feel sympathetic towards one.

One of the things I've come to decide about my own tastes where POV is involved is: If you leave more to the imagination of the reader they'll fill it in with what works best for them.

A good example of this is scary movies. For me a scary movie that never actually shows me the monster, but only lets me see his actions or the effect he has are always way more scary than the ones that are flashing the lame CG monster in my face every ten seconds. Not afraid of a CG monster, but the monsters my imagination supplies? Yeah, they scare me.

The other thing that made me finally put the book down was that since I couldn't identify with any one character, there was nothing to keep me reading in spite of being turned off by the behavior of the main character.

The writing was decent to good. I did find that either the writer didn't trust her readers sometimes to get what she was saying or didn't trust herself to get her point across, so there was some redundancy.

Overall, I think given time and experience I would consider trying future offerings from this author.

(This review will be limited to my blog. Since I didn't finish it, it wouldn't be fair to post it anywhere else. For all I know it got amazing after I gave up.)