There is a table, smack dab in the middle of the library I go to, promoting over twenty "reader's choice" books. You read, you vote, and if you read enough your name is entered into a drawing for a prize. I first noticed the table when Shannon Hale's Austenland was displayed but hadn't heard of any of the other titles or authors before. Thinking to myself that I liked Austenland so, perhaps I would like the others as well.
This is not a good table for me. Karma Girl, which was my first selection from the table, seems to have only brought bad reading Karma. None of these books are horrible, just none very good either. And I can't help wondering why libraries are promoting "just o.k" books. Aren't they supposed to be professionals?
Blind Spot is about a female FBI detective, Bernadette St. Clair, who has been able to "see" what killers see ever since her twin was killed by a drunk driver. The FBI, embarrassed by her, but unwilling to dismiss her gift, moves her around from town to town to solve difficult homicide cases. The trouble is, since she can only see what the killer sees, she doesn't usually know what the killer looks like, unless he or she happens to look in a mirror. In addition, she doesn't know when her visions are occurring, as in real time, or not. As a result, she has made mistakes in cases before, making her crime solving skills a liability.
All this I can handle. The premise is interesting enough. What makes this book subpar is that the author goes a step too far in making odd Bernadette into a crazy, ridiculous, way-too-unlikely-to-be-real character. Besides that, the reader knows who the killer is very early on in the book, so the chapters describing her visions are unnecessary - the narrator already took us there.
Anti climatic with a far fetched ending, I can't recommend this one.
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