Blogging for Books: The Crossing Book Review

It took me a while to get going in this new book by Serita Jakes called The Crossing. I had read great reviews on Amazon and was excited to get it as my next book installment for review but once I began to read I got bogged down in a lot of back story and useless information about the characters. The basic plot is that 10 years ago a cheerleading coach was gun downed and then bled out in front of some of her students. Now they are dealing with what happened that night and trying to find closure when the case is re-opened. Because the book bounces between a number of different characters it was also hard to pinpoint who the book was ultimately about.

Once the story got going the plot was interesting enough to hold my attention and want to know who did what in the ending. The ending didn't surprise me but I was disappointed as to how fast it was thrown together. Instead of showing us the ending in what could have been an exciting conclusion the author told us the ending in an epilogue.

As for the characters, I didn't like any of them except maybe Victor and I didn't care for how most of the ending turned out for anyone but Claudia and Victor. I'm sure it is true to life but I think Casio's character could have been written and finished so much better. The author sets up a lot of suspense but delivers on very little. Of course, I say this as a reader who prefers more action and suspense and a few times saw opportunities built into the plot that weren't explored.

I would recommend this book to readers for the plot alone - I enjoyed it once it got moving and was interested as to how it all played out but I can only give the book three stars due to the very slow start, the overkill on every character's background story (childhood included) and the fact that the ending could have been so much better and more dramatic than it was.

I received this book free from Waterbrook Multnomah Publishing Group's Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review.