Darkness

Interesting original story, lots of beautiful detail, a solid win for Robards

This book was fantastic! I have only three or four-ish problems with it, and honestly, they're nitpicking, because it was overall a solid piece of work, in my opinion. I may reveal a few spoilers. First and most inconsequential, the cover design. It's beautiful, I absolutely love it--hot pink is my favorite color!--but it 100% clashes with the content and the title. It looks whimsical and seductive and feminine and sexy--which is perfect, for a novel of pure, flowery, cheesy romance. But this is romantic suspense with a sense of harsh reality, and I just think it would have made more sense to do something that included elements of the Alaskan environment, or at the very least made the colors shades of gray, white, and blue. They should have done a foggy, mysterious picture of dark clouds to represent the weather, which played a huge role in the book. I realize the author doesn't have a whole lot of control over it, and the purpose of cover art is marketing and day-glo is trending, but still, they could have done something a little more relevant to the story. Second, there were some really weird page breaks. I don't know if that's how Robards wrote it, or just how it was edited and sent to print. I don't remember her using breaks so liberally before, at least not so jarringly. Usually page breaks are used to mark a switch in point of view or scene, but sometimes they're used as a dramatic pause when the character has a startling revelation or is surprised by something. An in-story cliffhanger, if you will--Sandra Brown has it down to an art--but there's usually still a change in scene or voice afterward. However, most of these breaks were used as dramatic pauses, but then the text continued in the same scene, in the same voice, and I really think a lot of them weren't necessary at all. They should have just kept the paragraphs together; as it was, the breaks interrupted the flow, and every time I had to take a moment to mentally regroup and re-immerse myself in th...