Late to the party as usual but I am armed with a book review!!!

A book review of Manipulating the List

            Wow, am I ever late with this review! People, I can only apologize for my tardiness. Life has been on the warpath, keeping me in its crosshairs with no hope of coming up for air.

            Until now!

            So, we have K.B. Lever’s novel, Manipulating the List. It was given to me in exchange for an honest review and away we go…

            Let me start off by saying that even if I hadn’t been given this book to review, I would’ve picked it up anyway by the cover alone. There’s something haunting about those blue eyes, something that prompts you to turn the pages, to find out what list, who’s manipulating who or what and why. Unfortunately, however, beyond that, I didn’t find much to keep me anchored to the story.

            It’s not that I didn’t like it—it’s a unique one---a young woman named Katherine Sheppard befriending Death as a child, not really understanding it until she’s older, kind of like having a mobster for a parent. But the writing didn’t seem consistent. There were a lot of repetitive sentences. The jump in age for our female protagonist was so abrupt that I felt like I’d missed something and I couldn’t really develop a feel for her. In fact, as the story went on, I found myself not liking her more and more. Even when she finds out who Death is and how he works, she doesn’t seem to take it very seriously. It becomes a game that she plays rather selfishly.

            There’s a lot more focus on the characters Death is collecting rather than the story itself and its heroine—if that’s what you can even call her. I actually found myself liking those people more than Katherine. They had more dimension, more depth to them. They were likeable and you felt bad for them for reasons I won’t say in case any of you want to read it.

            Overall, I give this book two and a half stars out of five. In most cases, Lever’s writing flows nicely and it’s so obvious that she has talent. But the book needs some editing to deal with those repetitive phrases and also to flesh out the main character. Secondary characters should never be more interesting than the main one.