Wednesday, June 24, 2015

One More Dance by Valentine Cardinale Review


One More Dance is a powerful tale about two people looking for love, a family in crisis, and the search for a mysterious assailant. After Julian Case, a Manhattan realtor and widower, meets Alegra Rossini, a university professor and single mom, at a wedding in Italy, he's confident he's found new love. On the plane back to the States, he's already making plans to see her again. But when he enters his home in New Jersey, he discovers his son has been savagely attacked and left for dead. Fearing that whoever beat the young man into a coma will try to finish the job, Julian puts his life on hold to assist in the investigation to find the assailant. And so the mystery begins, taking the first of many telling twists and turns. Who did it? Is there a likely suspect? Will the attacker strike again? Can a father unlock the secret connection and find his son's attacker before it's too late? Will Julian lose his chance at new love as he throws himself into the chase? In Italy, Alegra, who feels as strongly about Julian as he feels about her, can only continue teaching, caring for her eight-year-old daughter, and hoping. Will she let real love slip away from her? Can she wait as Julian deals with a family crisis that may take months, or years, to resolve while she struggles to get on with her life? The quest to find new love after the death of a spouse is understandable and a universal concern. But when it conflicts with a grave family matter, does it have to take a back seat? Should Julian be denied the chance for one more dance in his life?


My Review:
3 stars

One More Dance was an okay read for me. I enjoyed the suspense behind “whodunit”, as well as the vividly portrayed characters. However, I also had some issues with the story’s abrupt changes in scenes and POVs. For example, the book opened up with the brutal crime happening, and then abruptly switched to the happy wedding in Italy. Plus, there are so many different POVs in this story. Practically every secondary and main character has at least a few scenes seen through their eyes. While I think I know what the author was trying to go for, after a while, instead of keeping the story fast paced, it just kept throwing me off and pulling me out of the story.

My biggest issue with this book was that it wasn’t really big on the romance. Normally, I wouldn’t care, except the blurb, the book cover, and the author’s description on his website promoted this as primarily a romance mystery novel, which is why I wanted to read it. However, the romance played a secondary role to the mystery, and on the paperback, the book isn’t even categorized as a romance in any way.

All in all, this was an okay book for me, and if you’re looking for a mystery with interesting characters, this may be the book for you. However, if you’re looking for a romance mystery, I would recommend looking elsewhere.


*I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.*
*This is a sponsored post.*

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