SAFFRON NIGHTS by Liz Everly

Saffron Nights by Liz Everly
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

NetGalley free read

I really wanted to like this book and it started interestingly enough, but quickly went downhill about halfway through.

Maeve is basically a ghostwriter for chef's doing all the research and writing up the descriptive with Jackson as photographer. It seems they've worked on many projects before, but haven't had to be in the same room or space until now. They are about to do a cook books on aphrodisiacs, when the Chef partner of theirs is killed.

Firstly, I didn't like the constant change from Maeve's point of view to Jackson, to the third person perspective without any notice. One paragraph would be Maeve describing something and talking to the next being Jackson to the author. It was a bit dizzying.

I felt like the author missed opportunities to describe the locale and make it interesting or lush. I had no interest in ever visiting any of the locations and I've been to a couple of them. The author says the flew to Hawaii, but they were going to the "big" island. I was thinking that Honolulu is the big island. Where else could they have flown into direct from New York. That didn't make any sense to me, unless I was missing something.

The characters where picked up and dropped so abruptly, there was no way to get attached or really know what they meant to the story. One moment Maeve is deciding that she wants to no longer date her boyfriend, Mark, who lives in London to him being a hitman and killing people. There's not even a real reason for any of this. I mean why did he kill Chef Paul, Alice the agent and then himself? It was all so muddled by way of a storyline. Did he kill the Sasha? Who bombed the hotel room they were staying in and why?

The description of the intimate moments were kinda boring. They would kiss then all of a sudden someone was having an orgasm. Also, who lets a woman walk home alone in forigen country, especially in Morrocco where women are like second class citizens. I know that Jackson left Maeve with the other woman eating deserts, but either he shouldn't have left and waited for her or should have said something to her about making sure she wasn't out alone. And why was Maeve so drunk, when I believe the story states she only had a glass or two of wine? Did someone drug her, was it the aphrodisiac with the wine?

I mean, it's lucky I'm giving this 2 stars. I just liked the idea and I liked that Maeve was so independent that she had an open relationship and wasn't hung up on conventions and would have sex any way she thought would be good for her.

But even Jackson's character was a bit too soft. For someone who was a womanizing jerk for the most part, he sure became a sap easily and quickly.

Just didn't work for me, but something kept me reading it.

View all my reviews