Review: Lazarus

Lazarus by Lars Kepler
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I refuse to believe that this book is part of an international bestselling series. I haven't read any of the other books. Instead, I choose to come into this blindly because the cover was interesting and it's from Sweden. When I was done "letting the book happen to me" because that's what it felt like, I tried to look up whether this was a translation or was written in English. There's nothing in the kindle copy which says, as far as I could find. Although it turns out the author is a husband-wife duo.

I am not a guy who does well with Grammar. I'm an ok writer but not great by any means. My mother thinks I should write professionally but mothers are like that. I'm very honest about my shortcomings. I'm also not a professional in the book industry, so take everything I say for my own opinion and nothing else.

It's not even a distaste but a pure disgust that I have for anyone's work of which they write like this:
The man...
The color of the door..
The boat...
The priest...
The hat...

I just made up those examples but the prologue did have a priest who took a boat to get somewhere so it's semi related. I find using "The" to start sentences over and over to be a poor standard. The section doesn't even pace well. Now, when the writers break out of this it does pick up but then they find themselves right back here. Sometimes I felt like an elementary school kid was writing. Other times I felt like it struggled between being a story I was about to get caught up in and then it pulled me out to sound like someone telling me what was going on instead of showing me. It could be the language barrier as I'm sure English isn't the writer's first language, being from Sweden and all. It may be for stylistic purposes that I feel just don't work. I'm hoping it's not a translator's choice to do this.

The story itself was alright. Presentation is key though, and this missed that mark.

*Goodreads edit: There is a translator listed on the Goodreads website. Review was originally written for another site.

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