Reviewed by Chris
TITLE: X Marks the Spot
AUTHOR: M.J. O’Shea
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 200 pages
BLURB:
Jack Hunter is always on a quest for lost art, ancient manuscripts, and anything else that’ll romance the millions of viewers who watch his show each week. He hasn’t always hit pay dirt in his searches though, and a string of empty global treasure hunts has left his show on the brink of cancellation. Jack needs a white whale, a holy grail, nothing less than a miracle to revive his career.
Aloysius “Alo” Green likes his ivory towers. He’s content to study from the comfort of a university library and publish papers nobody other than academics will ever read. But coded letters pointing to hidden Nazi treasure fall into his hands, and while colleagues warn him to keep them to himself, Alo can’t stop obsessing. He makes a huge mistake and publishes a paper on his find, ignoring the danger doing so will bring.
Jack is sure he’s struck gold when his assistant brings Alo’s paper to him. Alo wants nothing to do with Jack or his televised treasure hunt. But after Alo is threatened, it appears Jack is his best bet to silence those who seek to use him to find the vast wealth first.
By trusting Jack, Alo might’ve saved himself… or made his worst decision yet.
REVIEW:
Who knew that publishing an article about how your great-grandfather secretly hid treasure all over Europe would lead to trouble? Well, ok, probably anyone could have figured that out. But it wasn’t exactly like Alo was expecting people to try and kill him for the letters in his possession. Or for some creepy rich dude to send his henchmen after him. Two months after the article was published, Alo is deeply regretting it all, though.
Then tv presenter Jack Hunter, star of a treaure-seeker adventure show, drops into his life. And while Alo would like to just fade back into obscurity, and safety, he is more than a little tempted by Jack and his offer to help him find the treasure hidden by his great-grandfather. Though, to be honest he could do w/o the constant fear of death.
When I read the blurb for this book I thought it was a great premise. Treasure hunts, shadowy villains, hot Indiana Jones-like character. Lots of fun.
Which it was…for the most part. The trail thru Europe, with all the cool locations and slightly less than legal tours they had to take to get to the treasure, was cool. The history of it, the underlying truth of where all these things came from, was something I enjoyed reading about.
However, the romance and the mystery (of who was following them) aspects were a bit of a let down. I honestly didn’t feel any of the chemistry between the two MCs. Had this just been an adventure story I think I would have bought it more. Both Alo and Jack are great characters, but between them there wasn’t any spark. And I think Jack got off way too easily at the end. He barely even apologised for acting like an ass and Alo was all happy and shit to declare his undying love.
And that twist at the end really felt like it came out of nowhere. I like what happened, and what the twist was, but I would have liked to have had some clues leading me up to the reveal.
This was an entertaining story, especially if you are in a mood for late night breaking and pretty low-angst adventure. I just wish the there had been a bit more than that.
RATING:
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