Reviewed by Annika
TITLE: Words 
AUTHOR: John Inman
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
RELEASE DATE: June 12, 2018
LENGTH: 210 pages
BLURB:
The world of writers, readers, and reviewers is a close-knit family of friends, fans, and fiction fanatics. That’s the world Milo Cook and Logan Hunter reside in—thriving on the give and take of creativity, the sharing of stories and ideas, and forever glorying in their boundless love of books and the words that make them breathe.
But sometimes words can cut too deep. And when they do, there is inevitably a price to pay.
What begins for Milo and Logan as a time of new love and gentle romantic discoveries, becomes before it’s over a race for their lives and for the lives of everyone they know.
Who would ever suspect that an entity as beautiful as the written word could become a catalyst for revenge? And ultimately—murder?
REVIEW:
John Inman sure knows how to set the tone of a book. I was immediately drawn in by his words and the atmosphere he created from that very first descriptive page. It had me turning the pages to find out what happened next. Words is set in our world. The world of authors, readers and reviewers. The world of books and book lovers. Only there is something sinister going on under the surface, reviewers across US are murdered and no one knows who or who’s next on the list.
There are two parallel story lines to follow in this book; the thrilling and at times gruesome one told by the serial killer targeting and killing their victims and the more quiet love story between Milo and Logan an author and a reviewer.
We first meet Milo when he’s holding a book signing for his latest book, only the signing isn’t going to well there’s not a reader in sight. Logan hunter is starting over after losing his husband a year earlier. Moving to a new town at the other side of the country he hopes to escape the memories and move forward with his life. Rushing to a book signing by one of his favourite authors he never expected them to form an instant friendship or for it to develop into something more.
Their romance was a quiet one. It grew from a formed friendship. It’s not a hot and heavy, don’t get me wrong there’s plenty sex to be had, but it’s not detailed or explicit, nor is it fade to black. You just have to use your own imagination of what was going on in the sheets.
The parts that were told from the killer’s POV had me almost biting my nails. And I’m far from a nail biter, so that should tell you something. You could feel the hatred radiating from the Traveller and made you count your blessings you were not on their target list. Inman had me at the edge of my seat, waiting in suspense for what was going to happen next, who was the next target and would the culprit ever be caught.
There were a few things that I really found refreshing about this book. The story line hasn’t been told to death already. Sure the romance or murder mystery plot has been told before (but what story hasn’t, as this book clearly stated in the beginning; there are only seven unique plot lines). However the deliverance of the plot is unique; there is no melodrama for the sake of it, no TSTL moments or amateur sleuthing to catch a serial killer, no miscommunications or misunderstanding. There’s just two people muddling through life, through the twists and turns and emotions of lives well lived. Sure Milo’s and Logan’s romance isn’t effortless or without it’s struggles, but what they were going through were things you’d expect a widower and a slightly mistrustful author to go through.
Now, for the part that I didn’t particularly enjoy about this book. At times it felt a bit on the preachy side to me. There was just a little too much about the evilness of reviewers, how reviewers destroys author careers and so on and authors are portrayed like almost flawless people that can do no wrong. I do think that this is a difficult topic to write about. Authors and reviewers need each other, we are interdependent. At the same time there is a line that divides us. Don’t get me wrong trolling and trashing isn’t okay by any means (no matter who you are and what you are writing about), but it’s far from everyone that partakes in this kind of behaviour. There are bad apples on both sides and sadly they give everyone a bad name and a wary outlook on the written word. While I agree with the overall message I believe Inman was aiming for; respect of each other it fell a bit short in the deliverance and was just on this side of preachy.
I love the way Inman writes, he has a beautiful way to craft his books and he makes the stories come alive, to the point where you can almost touch on the atmosphere he’s created. And while this might not have been my favourite book by him (I don’t know if anything can beat Sunset Lake), it was still a very good one and well worth the read.
RATING: 
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