millinocket's Full Review: Sandra Brown - Chill Factor
A long distance car trip requires careful planning. Routes and gas and food and rest stops to stave off plankass, of course. But the more important planning is in what the passengers are going to do to occupy the long, long hours on the interstate. First there's strategically timed naps, then there's the all-important Car Book. It's much like the Plane Book - it needs to be available in paperback so as not to injure hands or arms of the reader, shallow enough to allow for frequent breaks (to drive, pee, nap) and thoroughly absorbing enough to make that long, flat stretch of highway bearable. My personal choice is the Bloody Knife - Trash Subcategory novel. What is that, you say? It's a nice, bloody thriller with some juicy, trashy sex thrown in for good measure. My author of choice? Sandra Brown, whose Chill Factor is a Car Book Extraordinaire.
It was a dark and stormy night...... No, really. That's essentially the whole premise of the book. Main character Lilly Martin is in the sleepy little burg of Cleary, North Carolina. Unfortunately, her business there is painful - she's closing up the summer home she shared with her husband Dutch, a Cleary native. She's closing it for the last time - she and Dutch are finalizing their divorce with this last chore. After a painful interaction, he leaves and she needs to make her way down the mountain on which the cabin is perched in order to get back to Atlanta and her new life. But........there's a problem (of course). A major winter storm has descended and she finds herself not only trapped in the cabin, but trapped with an injured acquaintance after an accident. Add to the mix a serial killer who has been preying on the small town for several years and this is a bad night all around. Hopefully, Lilly will survive to tell the tale.
Yes, it's just that cheesy. But oh, such fun! Sandra Brown knows how to pace a book - she goes from some basic character building right into the meat of the action with record speed. There's no time to fall asleep while she describes the town or its denizens in over-rich detail. We get that in bits and pieces along the way, as they interact during the storm. That's where most of the back story is shared as well, giving the book a series of small breaks from the main plot that let you catch your breath and serve to dish up some nice red herrings and misdirection as well. The basic story is not genius - it's fairly standard thriller fare - but it's good enough and fast enough and includes enough sex to make you forget the plot holes and the unlikely coincidences and let you plow on through the book with the kind of glee only guilty pleasure reading gives. The sex is not tame, but it isn't clinically graphic either. Brown is of the "throbbing loins" school of writing - loads of euphemisms for each action and motive during anything racy. The violence is similar. It's more inference and description of events past than anything too severe happening during the main narrative.
Chill Factor is completely trashy and I enjoyed every minute of it. It's well written trash, which means it can take you to its places, manipulate you into rooting for its heroes and heroines and buy its premise no matter how contrived. What it is not is something you will ever feel the need to pick up again. Once you finish it you can give it to the next weary traveler who still has twelve hours to go in the back seat of a Prius before they get home. It is complete brain candy and serves its purpose with aplomb. Recommended for anyone who likes trashy thrillers and will be trapped with little to do for an entire day. It's way more fun than watching the pavement go by and might even trump a nap or two.
Suspense abounds in this gripping new thriller from New York Times bestselling author Sandra Brown, in which a successful magazine editor is trapped i...More at Bostic Media
Suspense abounds in this gripping new thriller from New York Times bestselling author Sandra Brown, in which a successful magazine editor is trapped i...More at HotBookSale
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