The Botanist Review

First off, thank you to Sophie of Seamless Reader for bringing this book to my attention! Your reviews are awesome!

Another big thank you to the publisher for sending me this book.

The Botanist

Author: L.K. Hill

Publish Date: March 31, 2015

Publisher: Jolly Fish Press

     In the heat of the desert, Detective Cody Oliver inadvertently stumbles upon a strange garden adorned with exotic flowers. Upon closer inspection, he finds the garden is but a cover for the scores of bodies buried below. Soon, the small town of Mt. Dessicate plunges into chaos as journalists, reporters, and cameramen from across the nation descend upon the tiny, desert town to get a piece of the action.
     Along with the media, a mysterious woman appears. She may be the only person who has come face to face with the killer, dubbed the Botanist, and lived to tell the tale. If Cody can't piece together a timeline of the land the crime scene is located on, decipher how the woman's mysterious past is connected to the killer, and bring the Botanist to justice, he may lose the people he values most.

If you're going to read this book, I suggest you brush up with the Skeletal System and maybe watch a couple episodes of Bones. This is a mystery/thriller. There are murder victims and their injuries are described in a "forensic anthropologist way." It'll be easier to read if you know the lingo.

     This is "negative" review. I primarily focused on the negatives, instead of the positives, but this book was great. I liked this book. I would definitely recommend this book to friends.

     I am surprised with this book. I thought I was going love this book, but my affections toward this book isn't as strong as I thought it would be. I liked this book very much. The author created a lot of suspense and tension. The book was dark. It also had romantic undertones. All those things call to me. I don't know why but, dark and heavy stuff is just really intriguing. I was kinda disappointed with the dark factor. It really didn't faze me. I had a couple of what? I mean, OK, whatever. moments. Nothing REALLY screamed dark, horror, gorey, gonna give me nightmares. My friend Nica would probably laugh at the "gore".

     The book was really slow. I didn't speed through this as fast as I wanted to. I got easily distracted by Instagram and didn't really feel the need to get back to the book. (I always get distracted by IG, but if I LOVED the book, I get straight back to it!)

     This book is really interesting. It just took too long to end. I get that finding killers don't happen very quickly, unfortunately, but it was really dragged out. At first, I thought the first few chapters were really out of place, but I knew that it would eventually make sense. It was still very iffy. It took a while for it to intertwine. That's the thing about sub-plots that aggravate me-they take too long to make sense.

     There was also "themes" of insta-love. Cody is making Alex seem like Beyonce (A.KA. a goddess.) He called her intelligent and admirable after meeting her 5, give or take, times. It happened too quickly. If he said all that after having a "proper heart to heart" conversation, as seen on page 176, then I would have no problem with that opinion.

     Enough about the writing.

     I found Alex's disturbance a bit unreasonable. I found her paranoid and melodramatic. She just got a bad feeling and just immediately assumed the worse. She felt so strongly, that she had to report it. You see what I mean?

     As the story progressed, you see that she was right to feel that way and I started to like her as the story progressed. She is a strong, independent woman. I give her major props. She's pretty ballsy.

     Cody...there isn't much to say about him. I felt like he was just there. Sure, he does a lot of really cool, important things, but I didn't really feel anything.

     Keeping my thoughts on characters broad: every character contributed to the story. They gave you weird auras or made you laugh. They were all different and added different elements to this book.

     It's a very interesting plot. There was a lot of stuff going on. There was a "back story", that revealed the killer. :-( Dramatic irony is the devil. 

     One note to the publisher: there are a couple spelling errors, sometimes there are extra punctuation marks, and no spaces after the marks.