Review of ‘Drawn’ by Carsen Taite
This book held my attention from start to finish. I’m a huge Taite fan and I love it when she writes lesbian crime romance books. Because Taite knows so much about the law, it gives her books an authentic feel that I love. Plus her books are always entertaining which is something we could all use right now.
Two women see each other across a crowded room. The noise falls away and the only people these two can see are each other. The attraction between them is instant and strong. But what happens when one of these women is a detective and the other one just might be a killer?
This book had a real quick pace that I loved. It never dragged and I was flying through the pages. Besides the mystery of who the killer is, both characters are dealing with pretty big issues. There was a good amount of interesting storylines happening that kept me glued to the book. And it was also a treat that Morgan for ‘It Should Be a Crime’ made a cameo. Her book is one of my Taite favorites so I loved seeing her character again.
I also really enjoyed a slight change in Taite’s writing style. She wrote in the POV of both characters and since there is a killer on the loose, this book is taking place in a shorter time frame. What Taite did that was different is that, if you were with one character, you didn’t miss out on what was happening at the same time with the other main character. For instance, one character might be at home working on her art and we are in her POV while she is sketching until she opens the door to the detective. Then we switch to the detective’s POV but here Taite backs-up the timeline so we get to see what the detective was doing before she actually got to the artist’s door. I hope I explained that so it made sense. It was a really cool author’s trick and I don’t know why it isn’t used more. This way of writing makes it so as a reader you don’t feel like you are missing out on anything because you get to be there for all the important parts even when the characters are separated with two things happening at the same time. It was well done and something I wish more authors would try writing.
While this book completely entertained me, I did have some issues. The biggest one was the book’s length. This story was too short! I felt like I flew through this book and I so badly just wanted more. There were a lot of loose ends that I wanted to see play out. I wanted to see Morgan do her thing. I wanted to see a certain secondary character get lambasted for his poor mistakes. After Taite spent the whole book showing all the interesting parts with her little writing trick, it was a letdown just to hear a quick summary of what happened on the last page. And while I really liked the mains and was rooting for a HEA, they needed more time together too. This book needed at least 3 more chapters. I have been having bad luck with some rushed endings lately and I don’t know what’s going on.
Even with my main complaint, I had a lot of fun with this book. Law, crime, mystery, or bounty hunters, if Taite writes about any of these I will not only read the book but I will stalk the release date too. I would easily recommend this to Taite fans and crime-romance fans. I’m pretty disappointed that this book is over for me already and I hope we don’t have to wait too long for Taite’s next. 3.75 Stars.
An ARC was given to me for an honest review.
