⭐️⭐️⭐️
Overview
Author: Ed Duncan
Genre: Crime, Thriller
Initial Release Date: May 6, 2020
Add it to your shelf: Goodreads
Purchase: Amazon
Review
To begin, I just want to state that this book was sent to me by Kelsey and the team over at Book Publicity Services in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts below are my own and are not influenced in any way.
Rico Stays is the third installment in this crime/thriller franchise, but I had never read either of the two previous books. One thing this author does well is write in a way that this book can stand on it’s own and tell a story. I love when books in a series can be read and enjoyed by themselves while drawing the reader’s interest to what happened previously. He did a great job of telling us the background info we need to know and explaining the relationships of each character, sometimes with too much description.
The story follows Richard “Rico” Sanders as he runs into some trouble early in the story and has to deal with the fallout of it. Long story short, he ends up with some people gunning for him and he needs to avoid/take care of them to keep the people around him safe. I think the fight scenes are my favorite thing about this book. They ramp up in intensity quickly and the over the top descriptions of each little movement fit in perfectly with the well-known tropes of the genre. Each of the encounters felt quick and contained, which I also enjoyed since some books like this can overstay their welcome, a lot of which comes from bloated fights.
I don’t want to make too many comments on the characters themselves since I am sure they were fleshed out further in the previous books, but in this book as a standalone these characters didn’t really speak to me. I liked a few of them, like Jean, but overall none of them really seemed to be likable. It could be an intended feeling that goes along with the overall themes of the book, and it didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the story, but I felt like it was something that needed to be stated.
One thing I did notice was that the author, at times, dove to deep into the descriptions of things and characters. I like getting information when a new character is introduced in the book, but it felt like too much at once. I also noticed that we got some of the same info multiple times throughout the book and it didn’t seem like it was necessary. I think it could have been trimmed down in areas in order to keep things more concise.
All in all I thought the story was fun and engaging from start to finish. There were, however, a few typos and grammatical errors that I couldn’t ignore. I felt like the book could have used another few read throughs by the editor and could have been a bit more polished. Looking past some of these flaws you are greeted with a fun read from Ed Duncan. I think he really has a gift for telling a story, even if I had some issues with the overall package.
As always, thank you all so much for taking the time to read this review and thanks once again to Kelsey and her team for sending me this book for review. I really appreciate the opportunity they gave me! If you all have read this book or any of Ed Duncan’s other work let me know what you thought in the comments below. Check back for new posts here (at least) every Wednesday and Saturday and sign-up via email to make sure you never miss a thing! Be safe and have a great day!
Books and Pixels 