Review: ‘Madeline’ by Serena Thomas
Now, I had the pleasure of reviewing the debut novel, ‘Madeline’, written by one of my twitter friends, Serena Thomas.
This is the description of the book, provided by the author:
Suffocating in an abusive relationship, Madeline Mayers takes the first step toward freedom by landing a job at a top investment firm. From her short burst of bravery, she finds herself working closely with the charming and charismatic owner. The only solace Maddie finds is working side by side with Nicholas York. His unfamiliar playfulness and sweet nature suck her in to his grasp as she coasts along with her negligent boyfriend, sparking a deep seeded desire to be loved. The more time they spend together, the more Maddie yearns for Nick even as she hides her battered home life from him. Terrorized by her boyfriend, Maddie reaches her breaking point and goes to desperate measures to escape. Her actions prompt Nick to reveal a heartbreaking secret that could threaten her chances of falling into his loving arms. Maddie and Nick must decide whether to become each other’s solutions and allow their romance to bloom or ignore their instant connection and walk away. – See more at: http://www.bookcountry.com/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=4296#sthash.2daQ3Q2V.dpuf
Now, I will just mention, that the version I had wasn’t the completed, finished version, so this review is also acting to give feedback and improvements to the author.
The first thing I will mention, is my issue with the title. (And this isn’t because I have the same name!). No, I found this book to be a dark, chilling romance full of suspense. Yet, the first thing I thought of when I read the title was the books by Ludwig Bemelmans, which have the same name. And this is nothing like them!
No, this book is dark, gripping, chilling thriller. In general, it was written in a sophisticated style, however there were few more things that annoyed me; particularly, at the beginning, there was more telling than showing, which kind of took away the tension the author had been building up, and within the first few chapters, I felt there was a lot of back-story ‘dumped’ in. Similarly, another thing that annoyed me, was that there were a lot of adjectives in the writing, telling us how characters spoke, or how actions were done. I think these adjectives, in a lot of places, were unnecessary, as the way the characters spoke could have been conveyed through their dialogue and the use of punctuation.
There were quite a few typos in this draft (and, after all, this isn’t a completed draft), missing apostrophes and commas, the mixing up plural and singular words, along with the wrong you’re/your and too/to used in several places. Also, there were a few poorly worded sentences with odd structures that didn’t exactly make sense grammatically, but I could still work out what the author was conveying. Yet this didn’t distract me from the actual story to such an extent that I couldn’t read it, if you get what I mean.
Now, onto characterisation: At first, the MC character, Madeline, annoyed me. She seemed weak as a main character, but the more I read of her narrative, the more I understood why she was like that. And, she was flawed. She was shy, scared, reluctant to trust—flaws which made her seem more real as a character, and, in a way, more relatable.
And, I loved the underlying commentary that Madeline gave us, which was written in italics, as she responded to what the speech and actions of other characters, in safety. It made her come across as a stronger character. And I loved the dry humour in some of her ‘commentaries’; my favourite line was, ‘can you hire me a hit man?’.
The characterisation of Ryan was very strong. He was terrifying in the majority of his scenes—something that the author intended—and the fear that Madeline felt for him was obvious through her speech and body language. This impressed me, as it showed that Thomas obviously knew both of her characters very well. They were real to her, so they were real to us as readers—something that’s very important.
Also, I loved the chemistry between Madeline and Nick. It felt real, and, yeah, it was good! And Nick was flawed as a character too; he was grieving. In fact, the three main characters all had big flaws (Madeline’s shy, scared personality, Ryan’s violent and controlling nature, and Nick’s grief), which is hugely important.
Serena Thomas chose to write in the first person narrative, from the perspective of Madeline, using present tense. And I think that both of these were excellent choices. It added tension and suspense, and the use of present tense propelled the reader into the action, making it almost seem more real. However, there were a few times when the past tense also crept in, amidst the present, but nothing major!
Another thing to do with structure that I noticed was how Thomas mainly stuck to the same dialogue-description structure, particularly in the second half of the novel. A character would speak, then their actions would be described. Then another character spoke, then their actions, and so on… I found a little repetitive, but, overall, things like this didn’t really matter as the storyline was gripping and kept me reading.
I liked the use of instant messaging and emails that were incorporated into the narrative; it really built the relationships up between the characters in a clever and sophisticated way.
There were a few continuity errors that I spotted, but nothing major. And any errors that I did spot were ‘overthrown’ by the power of the plot. I loved the ending. And there had better be a sequel!
Overall, this is a powerful, emotional, chilling story full of tension with an ominous tone and beautifully-sculptured characters.
4 out of 5 stars.
