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Showing posts with label Seidel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Seidel. Show all posts

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Review of Lovesick by Spencer Seidel

Publisher: PublishingWorks, Inc.
Release Date: June 21, 2012
Buying Links: (Ebook only) Amazon    Barnes & Noble     PublishingWorks, Inc.


Book Blurb (from goodreads):

“‘He’s got a knife!’ Jimmy said after seeing the glint of a blade in the kid’s hand. Jimmy brought his gun up and squared it at the kid.”

A murder rocks Portland, Maine after police discover an incoherent teen sitting in a pool of blood late one night. Paul Ducharme is found with a murder weapon in one hand, the dead body of his best friend in the other, and no clue how he got to the Eastern Promenade Trail. 
 
A teenage love triangle gone wrong brings Spencer Seidel back with a vengeance in LOVESICK, the follow up to his breakout novel Dead of Wynter. Seidel deftly illustrates the trying relationship amid a friend and love interest – each with their own desires, issues and shocking agendas. 

Wendy, the girl of Paul’s dreams, has been missing for weeks. Her boyfriend Lee has been murdered–apparently by Paul. It’s an open and shut case–or so most of Portland thinks.

When forensic psychologist Dr. Lisa Boyers is asked to interview Paul, who claims to forget the events leading up to the murder, she reluctantly agrees. In her jailhouse interviews, Lisa helps Paul to recover his memories, but the murder’s circumstances force her to recall her own troubled past. 

Media attention mounts. Reporters stream into Portland. All eyes turn to Lisa. She seems intent on exonerating the “brutal teen killer” but quickly finds herself the focus of an over-zealous reporter with a knack for digging up dirty secrets.  But the killer who has Lisa in the crosshairs already knows them all.


My Thoughts:

This is a gripping, complex story. On the surface, it seems like a story we might hear in the news. Unlike the news shows or many news web sites, the novel format allows us to go behind the headline to the truth of the story. Seidel actually tells two stories: one about Paul, the murder suspect, and one about Lisa, the psychologist examining him, and weaves them together. There are parallels between Lisa's life and the life of Paul's friend Wendy. Those parallels are painfully obvious to Lisa as she works with Paul and they open up a part of her life that she's tried to push aside and forget about.

Both stories, Lisa's and Paul's, are told in the third person. Paul is talking to Lisa, relaying events from his life leading up to his friend Lee's death, but it's told in third person. That allows for a bit more detail than we might get otherwise, but it actually lessens Paul's voice. Although he's the one relaying his story, it often sounds like an adult talking and not a troubled teenage boy. Still, we see that Paul is naive, a loner, and somewhat idealistic. While he seems to have a good grasp of Lee's behavioral problems, he is clueless about both Lee and Wendy's motivations and emotions, and he places Wendy on a pedestal. As their lives collide and events begin to spiral, Paul struggles with doing what's right and trying to reconcile the inconsistencies in people's behavior and their words.

Lisa has her own psychology practice, working with adolescents.  She's contacted by a former co-worker of her late husband, who is Paul's defense lawyer. She agrees to meet with Paul, a decision she comes to question, especially when the media puts her under their microscope and begins spreading false stories about her. She comes close several times to walking away from the case but convinces herself to stay every time. Additionally, she's dealing with her feelings for Rudy, Paul's lawyer; her painful past; and the person stalking her. She's emotionally closed off in some respects but also compassionate, smart, and occasionally impulsive.

I figured out Wendy's secret early on but it took me longer to see who killed Lee and why. I also figured out who was after Lisa, but there were some twists along the way. I started this book, and could hardly put it down. I read most of it in one sitting and stayed up until 2:30AM reading it. I was sucked in from the beginning. Seidel's style is spare, he delivers just enough detail to fill in the blanks and trusts the reader to fill in the rest. The story moved at an even pace, the characters were fleshed out felt real, and there's even a happy ending. Seidel's tone is unsentimental and clear eyed, his characters are flawed but not unrealistically so and he knows how to hold your attention. The story is not only a murder mystery but a psychological look at the story's main characters. It's not a light read, but it is a good one.

To read excerpts from the book, and follow Spencer's blog tour, go here: http://booktrib.com/?page_id=152303&preview=true


I received an ARC for review.

Excerpt from Lovesick by Spencer Seidel




Today I have an excerpt from Spencer Seidel's newest mystery, "Lovesick".  Just like his debut novel, "Dead of Wynter", this book is both a murder mystery and a psychological examination of people, their fears and their motivations. It weaves two stories, that of Paul, Lee and Wendy and the events leading up to the murder, and that of Lisa, the psychologist called in to give a forensic exam of the suspect. For Lisa, the case touches on events in her past that she's trying to ignore and forget.

"Lovesick" releases in June, but you can catch sneak peeks this month on the different blogs hosting excerpts. The next one can be found at  http://luxuryreading.com/


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
 Spencer Seidel’s love of reading and writing began as a child after he discovered Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. His first novel, Dead of Wynter, was published in 2011 and was well-received by critics and readers alike. When he’s not writing novels, Spencer enjoys playing loud rock guitar, something he’s been doing for over twenty-five years.

You can find Spencer at his website, Twitter, on facebook, and on Goodreads.





“‘He’s got a knife!’ Jimmy said after seeing the glint of a blade in the kid’s hand. Jimmy brought his gun up and squared it at the kid.”

A murder rocks Portland, Maine after police discover an incoherent teen sitting in a pool of blood late one night. Paul Ducharme is found with a murder weapon in one hand, the dead body of his best friend in the other, and no clue how he got to the Eastern Promenade Trail. 

A teenage love triangle gone wrong brings Spencer Seidel back with a vengeance in LOVESICK (PublishingWorks; $14.95; June 2012), the follow up to his breakout novel Dead of Wynter. Seidel deftly illustrates the trying relationship amid a friend and love interest – each with their own desires, issues and shocking agendas. 

Wendy, the girl of Paul’s dreams, has been missing for weeks. Her boyfriend Lee has been murdered–apparently by Paul. It’s an open and shut case–or so most of Portland thinks.

When forensic psychologist Dr. Lisa Boyers is asked to interview Paul, who claims to forget the events leading up to the murder, she reluctantly agrees. In her jailhouse interviews, Lisa helps Paul to recover his memories, but the murder’s circumstances force her to recall her own troubled past. 

Media attention mounts. Reporters stream into Portland. All eyes turn to Lisa. She seems intent on exonerating the “brutal teen killer” but quickly finds herself the focus of an over-zealous reporter with a knack for digging up dirty secrets.  But the killer who has Lisa in the crosshairs already knows them all.

By SPENCER SEIDEL
ISBN:
Published by: PUBLISHINGWORKS, INC.
Genre: FICTION, MYSTERY
Format: Trade,
Length: 374 pages
Release Date: JUNE 2012 
******************************************************************************

The night they discovered the murder, Jimmy and his partner, Bruce Hecker, were making their way up Sewage Plant Road, so named because of its proximity to a sewage plant overlooking the otherwise majestic Casco Bay. The cops had their windows cracked because the fall night air was crisp and felt good to breathe. 

“Sometimes the kids come out this way to smoke pot and drink beer,” Bruce said. 

“The smart ones head down a ways far enough that we can’t put our spotlight on ’em from the road to scare ’em off. But even the dumb ones know how to run, and it’s not hard to run from us here. So unless there’s something obviously going on that we need to know about, we usually just let ’em scatter.”

The cruiser rolled slowly up the dark road.  

Go To http://luxuryreading.com/  to read the next excerpt. To read more excerpts from the book, and follow Spencer's blog tour, go here: http://booktrib.com/?page_id=152303&preview=true

Sunday, May 1, 2011

ARC Review of Dead of Wynter by Spencer Seidel

Publisher:Publishing Works


Release Date: May 1st, 2011

More info:  Amazon

Book Blurb:

Dolly, it’s your mother.” Dolly. Jackie Ruth Wynter had called Alice that for years. The conversation that followed led her right back to the place she had run from for years. Her twin brother, younger by just a minute or so, had been fading, transforming into an image of their drunken, narrow-eyed father. Now her father was dead, and her brother, Chris, missing.

Alice resigns herself to return, helping her mother and the local police with the mystery surrounding the crime. But there are some family secrets her mother would sooner take to the grave than reveal.

Reacquainting with her past brings fresh pain and new friendships as she struggles with who to trust with the details of her father’s murder and brother’s disappearance. As the authorities come closer to solving the mystery of the men in her family, she begins to realize her past life as Alice Wynter is the missing part of the puzzle. But who is searching out the former Alice? The sinister mysteries of the Wynter family will capture the reader’s attention well past when the fire has gone out.


My Thoughts:

"Dead of Wynter" is not your typical mystery. There is a mystery, the death of Papa Wynter, but the story is as much about Dolly/Alice's relationships with her family, her brother Chris's high school years, and the secrets we keep and their consequences. Seidel delves into the psychology of the characters and examines their flaws, foibles and morals. The death of Papa Wynter, and Chris Wynter's disappearance, serve as the catalyst for the events in the book.

The book shifts between the present day, told from Alice's first person perspective, detective Don Lambert's first person perspective, and the first person perspective of Michael LaPage, Alice's high school boyfriend and 1984, where we are in Chris's head. It was a little disconcerting at times, shifting so much especially but it helped that the era determined whose head we were in. Mostly, it worked pretty well. My other quibble is that I would have loved if Seidel had given us Ray's perspective, even just a few times. Ray is their cousin, his father is brother to their father. Ray has problems and drags Chris into them. The consequences of their actions reverberate down to the present day. Given Ray's importance to the story and subsequent events, I wold have liked to see his thoughts and the change in his behavior.

Seidel portrays his characters clearly, with a writing style that is spare and unsentimental but not harsh: "Chris felt at that moment that he no longer knew Vic, that the old Vic had died right there on Gartlin's porch." *Note* This quote is from the ARC, the final version may be different or may not exist at all.

The book is a mix of predictable and unpredictable. I did not see the ending, specifically who was responsible for Papa Wynter's death though I did have a guess. Seidel had twists and turns that both flowed from the story and drove the story. I can't be more specific without giving away spoilers. Other than not getting inside Ray's head, my only other quibble is Michael's role. As the former boyfriend and tempting future lover, he worked. But the role he plays towards the end of the story felt forced. Someone needed to fill it, I'm just not sure he was the best choice.

While I don't anticipate reading this again (and that's always a factor in how good I think a story is), this was a well-written, thought provoking psychological mystery.

This ARC was received from the publisher for review.