Reviews for Reckless

The average rating for Reckless based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-02-16 00:00:00 Terry Charnley It took me awhile to figure out what time period this book took place in, since it seemed a bizarre amalgamation of past and present. When I finally got it narrowed down to turn of the century (late 1890s), the reading went much smoother, because suddenly it had a setting. Drake has clearly done a lot of research on the time period and the places the characters visit, but when no definitive clues are dropped until the reader is well into the story, it doesn't actually serve to deepen the setting, it's just very confusing. Hunter was an interesting character, strong and intelligent, and I probably would have liked the book a whole lot more if the story had followed him more than Kat. Kat annoyed me to no end. The other characters went on about how smart she was, what a quick study, but she kept doing one stupid thing after another. She's the type of heroine who thinks it's a good idea to rush off by herself to confront the hoard of bad guys without bothering to tell anyone where she's going, and then when she's inevitably captured and having her life threatened, she sits and thinks "oh well, they'll come for me." The only thing remotely intelligent she did was learn to translate Egyptian hieroglyphs into English in one afternoon. Fluently. I'm thinking this doesn't qualify her as a smart person, though. She's more of a savant. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle makes a rather gratuitous appearance, presumably to highlight the mystery portions of the book. In truth, the plot had potential and kept me turning pages despite wanting to bash Kat over the head with something blunt and heavy, but the ending aimed for something too large and just wound up feeling overblown. Some of that might have to do with Kat's insistence on plunging headfirst into danger when it wasn't necessary, but considering there was only one character in the entire book who is introduced as unlikeable, it's hardly a surprise when the villain is finally revealed. The prose suited the tone of the book, and the dialogue was appropriate to the time period. I briefly touched on the attention to detail before, but it bears mentioning again that Drake clearly knows how to enrich the world she's created without forcing lengthy descriptive passages in there. In all honesty, this book would likely have scored much higher if Kat hadn't been quite so -ahem- reckless. As it stands, I would have called the book Bull-headed Idiot, but I suppose it might not have sold quite as well that way.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-07-30 00:00:00 Charles Heinrich This was... better than the first book in this series. But not by much. And the synopsis on the back is extremerly misleading. Like, it was so bad I kept reading the back just to make sure I hadn't picked up the wrong book on accident (it happens, I have a LOT of mass market paperbacks on my nightstand). I actually liked Hunter, but he was NOTHING like his character in the first book. I understand that over a year characters grow and change... but idk. I just didn't enjoy the inconsistencies. I did love all of the danger. The scene where she finally admitted she loved him was SO DUMB, though.