Title: Love is Red
Author: Sophie Jaff
ISBN: 9780062346261
No. of Pages: 384
Genre: Fantasy
Origins: HarperCollins
Release Date: 12 May 2015
Synopsis:
“Redefining the thriller’s tale of the hunter and the hunted, This electrifying, hypnotically beautiful debut spins dark suspense and literary fantasy into a mesmerizing story of survival.
Katherine Emerson was born to fulfill a dark prophecy centuries in the making, but she doesn’t know it yet. However, one man does: a killer stalking the women of New York City, a monster the media dubs the “Sickle Man” because of the weapon he uses to turn his victims’ bodies into canvases for his twisted art. People think he’s the next Son of Sam, but we know how he thinks and how he feels . . . and discover that he is driven by darker, much more dangerous desires than we can bear to imagine. He takes more than just his victims’ lives, and each death brings him closer to the one woman he must possess at any cost.
Amid the city’s escalating hysteria, Katherine is trying to unknot her tangled heart. Two very different men have entered her previously uneventful world—handsome and personable David, alluring yet aloof Sael—and turned it upside down. She finds herself involved in a complicated triangle . . . but how well does she really know either of them?
Told from the alternating viewpoints of Katherine and the Sickle Man, Sophie Jaff’s intoxicating narrative will pull you in and hold you close. As the body count rises, Katherine is haunted by harrowing visions that force her to question her sanity. All she wants is to find love. He just wants to find her.
Ablaze with fear, mystery, and possibility, Love is Red is the first book in the Night Song trilogy. With this unforgettable novel—one that combines the literary and the supernatural, fantasy and horror, the past and the present—Katherine’s moment of awakening is here. And her story is only just beginning.”
On the surface, this has everything one would expect I would love. It has a touch of horror, suspense, and fantasy/occult on top of the murder mystery elements. Yet, several weeks after finishing it, the story is a distant memory. This is highly disappointing because I seem to remember liking it at the time. I do recall not being surprised by the ending as much as I wanted – the red herring was not so red. At the same time, there is the lingering confusion which one hopes is a direct result of unanswered questions because it is a series and not because the author failed to execute. Overall, I would love to be able to recommend it, but the faint remnants of the story make me reconsider the wisdom of doing so.
