4.5

Great engaging mystery! Will there be a series?!

Snakes invading an English village. Just the thought of it makes me terrified! That's what happens in this book, and disfigured wildlife vet Clara tries to find out what is happening.

I found the storyline intriguing and as I listened I got more engrossed in the story, until I looked at the clock and realised it was 3am, and had to finish the next day! I liked the character of Clara, though found her a little annoying at times. There's lots of obviously well researched info about snakes in this book. book has quite a creepy vibe with an eerie abandoned old house and a burnt out church. The ending, complete with a storm cutting the village off, is thrilling and had me on the edge of my seat.

The narration by Alison Reid was excellent.

I'm always up for a decent thriller as long as the gore isn't too over-the-top, and chose S.J. Bolton's Awakening to mix in with the recent run on graphic novels and chick lit I seem to have been reading.

::: The Plot :::

Clara is a veterinarian who specializes in the odd sorts of animals you might come across in the country or a small village, from badgers to swans. We learn fairly early on that she is a loner, sticking to herself because of a disfiguring scar she's had on her face most of her life.

When she's called in on more incidents involving snakes than are likely for the area she lives in, a mystery begins to unfold involving poisonous snakes from exotic locales, a mysterious church fire that occurred over 50 years ago, a strange (and possibly incestuous) family, and elderly neighbors being murdered right and left.

::: I'm Gonna Wash That Snake Right Outta My Hair :::

I spent a lot of time trying to come up with a good analogy for how the mystery plays out in Awakening, and the best one involved the reader following a trail of breadcrumbs only to have to try to stuff them all into a not-very-large turkey at the end. That isn't to say that the story is a turkey, but it was the best way to describe how the clues are left for the reader.

It's obvious within the first 50 pages what at least one of the underlying causes is for the entire plot, and who the potential victims will be, based on a clue that practically has a marquee flashing around it. Many of the clues are dropped in this obvious manner, and while how they tie together may not become completely clear until the end (when all of these clues and plot threads have to be wrapped up), it's obvious that You Are Expected To Pay Attention Here.

Along with the overly-obvious clues, there is a cast of characters that's often too large to be managed. As a reader, I often found myself flipping back to the front of the book to see if there was some sort of chart like you'll often find in romance novels. With a gang of five young hoodlums, an inter-married family of... arg, I lost count again... too many, several police officers, various clergy, neighbors, co-workers, reptile experts, plus Clara's family... Well, you can see how this might all get sort of confusing.

Still, Awakening is an interesting read, chock full of information about snakes, suspense that will still have you turning pages, and a sympathetic heroine in Clara.

This review was originally published at Epinions: http://www.epinions.com/review/Book_Awakening_S_J_Bolton/content_514797309572

Nice little mystery, esp. for an anglophile like me. Great summer read! Couldn't put it down, but probably won't remember it forever ...

Another gripping read from Sharon Bolton! It definitely terrified the pants off of me as I am home alone most evenings. The entire premise was very intriguing from the use of snakes to the religious angle. For a while I did indeed think she had included ghosts which was very surprising...but I'm glad it didn't turn out to be true. I am not a religious person at all but the sects she described terrify me, not that I believe in what they do, but people that intense in their beliefs are often dangerous mentally and physically.

I did find the relationships with Matt and Sean a bit odd and possibly unnecessary. Matt was set up like he was to be a love interest (ala Mark Josebury maybe?) but then he somehow had a girlfriend.; which seemed fine because she hadn't really shown interest. Then at the end of the book he's still apparently interested in Clara, and she's apparently interested as well. The whole Sean thing was weird and unresolved. He likes her and kisses her, she seems to have enjoyed it and then that's kind of the last of it. What?

This is probably the book I enjoyed least out of Bolton's back catalogue - I think it's possibly her first novel? The mystery veered a little too close to the ludicrous for my taste, and I was a little bored with the many tense encounters with snakes.

I was very much anticipating reading this novel after immensely enjoying Bolton's debut novel, Sacrifice; Awakening, while a solid work of crime/suspense fiction, failed to live up to brilliance of Sacrifice. The plot of Awakening revolves around a series of murders and disappearances, and the murders are carried out via venomous snakes: adders and taipans. Bolton does an excellent job of building the suspense leading up to the resolution and detailing the trials and turmoils of the protagonist, Clara, a veterinarian who works in rural England. Bolton also keeps the reader, for most of the novel, in the dark with regards to an important factor in Clara's life: very early in the novel, we learn that Clara has some unusual physical feature, and only very slowly is the nature of this feature revealed.

The denouement, however, is where this novel fails where the previous one did not. It is not so much the characters' motives as the manner in which everything unfolds that is the problem; without giving too much away, I shall just say that it seems as if Bolton wrote the climactic scenes as if she had in mind developing a screenplay for moving this novel to the big screen, and the ending winds up seeming too Hollywoodish and even far-fetched. Nevertheless, it was still, overall, a very good novel, and besides providing the chance to enjoy a generally good story, the reader will also receive a nice little education about snakes and religious snake-handling sects.