Summary
Twenty-nine-year-old,
independent, and self-assured Cambridge history professor Emma D'Eresby
has one obsession in life: the curious journal of a seventeenth-century
Englishman, a portion of which was left to her by her late grandfather.
When an unexpected opportunity to study the journal in its entirety presents itself, Emma finds herself leaving Cambridge to take up a year-long position at a prestigious university in Maine. Anticipating a quiet year of research, Emma quickly discovers her work impeded by a range of unforeseen complications. From the start, there is the well-intentioned matchmaking of her vivacious Russian colleague, Elena Smalova, and the unexpected jailing of one of her post-graduate students. More troublesome, however, are the unsolved, brutal night attacks on women near the university and Emma's suspicion that they might be linked to the sinister English professor, Kort Staahl. But, most diverting and disconcerting of all, is Emma's growing attraction to the strikingly handsome Dr. Matthew Lyons, whose kind but deliberately distant demeanor puzzles her.
Suspense and dread mount when Kort begins to take a persistent and unsettling interest in Emma. What are Kort's intentions, and what is he capable of? And the mystery surrounding Matthew only deepens when Emma discovers a link between him and the journal. What is Matthew trying to hide?
When an unexpected opportunity to study the journal in its entirety presents itself, Emma finds herself leaving Cambridge to take up a year-long position at a prestigious university in Maine. Anticipating a quiet year of research, Emma quickly discovers her work impeded by a range of unforeseen complications. From the start, there is the well-intentioned matchmaking of her vivacious Russian colleague, Elena Smalova, and the unexpected jailing of one of her post-graduate students. More troublesome, however, are the unsolved, brutal night attacks on women near the university and Emma's suspicion that they might be linked to the sinister English professor, Kort Staahl. But, most diverting and disconcerting of all, is Emma's growing attraction to the strikingly handsome Dr. Matthew Lyons, whose kind but deliberately distant demeanor puzzles her.
Suspense and dread mount when Kort begins to take a persistent and unsettling interest in Emma. What are Kort's intentions, and what is he capable of? And the mystery surrounding Matthew only deepens when Emma discovers a link between him and the journal. What is Matthew trying to hide?
Rating & Review
Where to start ... unfortunately, I'm having a difficult time finding a good place to start on this one. I've tried. It's taken me a couple of days to read this book ... 6 to be exact. That's not normal. It shouldn't take me that long to finish a book. The problem was that I just wasn't interested.
And I may be way off base on this one, there are a lot of people who really like this book. From the very first sentence, I just found it to be uninteresting. It's sad when I couldn't care less what is in store for characters. Usually, I get too invested in them but not this time. I didn't care at all.
I found the phrasing really weird in a lot of places, the humor wasn't ... funny ... or even amusing. There was a stiffness when it came to the conversations between the characters. It was almost as if the conversations weren't with real people, if that makes any sense. Now, I know that they aren't real people but when I'm reading a book, I expect for the characters to come across like like a real flesh covered person. But they all read like characters. There was nothing personable about them, nothing endearing, nothing. Just nothing.
This just was not a book for me. I was really interested when I read the blurb but this book and I were not a perfect fit. I mean, it was like trying to push a pizza through a credit card reader. We just didn't mesh.
Find Mortal Fire here:
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