No Refuge From Terri Blackstock’s “Cape Refuge”

Cape Refuge is a small town off the coast of Savannah, Georgia. Like most small towns, it is as close-knit and peaceful as a place can be – until the old couple in charge of the town’s halfway house is brutally murdered. The town, thrown into turmoil, searches desperately to find the killer while dealing with the emotional blow of losing two of its most beloved members.

Story:

The story starts fairly quickly. Shortly after you are introduced to the primary characters of the tale, the murder is discovered and a presumably innocent suspect is arrested. Unfortunately, the story stalls at that point for almost the entire rest of the book. The characters struggle with the loss of their loved ones for the entirety of this section, but not in a convincing fashion. By the time a little progression returns to the plot, you are over halfway through the book. Even then, the plot is so slow to move it is hard to notice any progression at all. The pace finally picks up at the very end of book, but that is long after any interest in the plot and story fades away.

This is a story about nothing. Early on, there is a murder, so you get all psyched up for a mystery story... but then nothing happens. And nothing continues to happen for the entire book. There was maybe one event worth reading per every fifteen chapters – and there are nearly 90 chapters in this thing.

Characters:

The characters are static and uninteresting. Once the murder happens, the rest of the book is spent exclusively in grieving. Their grief isn’t as much consistent as it is redundant. The same things are saddening them, and there really isn’t much depth to their anguish outside of the obvious. I was simply unconvinced that the characters had any sort of depth.

This book is full of idiots. I hated them all. The only guy I kinda liked was thrown in jail at the beginning of the book and never let out. Most of the characters were over-emotional morons with the common sense of a desk lamp.

Overall:

I can’t say I cared for this book. The plot progression was slow, and I found the characters to be uninteresting and unsympathetic. Throughout the book, there was also an extremely heavy-handed religious message – the book could be more likened to a sermon than a mystery. I don’t see myself reading anything else by this author.

2 / 5 Stars

This book is just not interesting. The only part which was interesting was the final climax like, eighty chapters in. Don’t bother with this one.

1 / 5 Stars

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