A friend of Alex recently asked me to review a book his company was publishing. No money exchanged hands, just a pre-release copy of the book ended up on my doorstep!

I love reading. Example: I owned 99% of the Babysitters Club collection (Little Sister, Superspecials, Mysteries, VHS movies, the major motion picture film and film soundtrack on cassette.) I’d read each book at least 4 times (skipping out that awful second chapter where Ann M. Martin had to explain the rules of BSC to the newbie readers) just to read something. Today, I still read before bed every night and I get a new book each time we travel. Having the kindle app on our Nexus7 also makes it really easy to 1-click any book I fancy. Oops.

Maybe I just googled “How to blog a book review” because the last one I wrote was for a 8th grade English project and involved a diorama. No dioramas here, but I also promise no spoilers.

The story of The Abomination is set in Venice and involves all the shady organisations you would expect. Church, police, the US military and… Croatia (?!?).  Through the lens of a murder investigation we the readers start to uncover layer after layer of conspiracy to cover up the bad intentions of a few.  It’s one of those stories set against real historical events, so it’s hard not to get sucked in to the juicy storyline of what could have really happened… maybe…

The plot is Dan Brown meets Stieg Larsson enough to keep you page turning and the charters interesting to follow. I enjoyed the focus on female leads in the story and as it’s the first book of a trilogy I will like to see where the author goes with them.  There are a lot of other contemporary issues within the story like the ordination of female priests and the use of social networks.  Never once reading this did I get that awkward feeling that it was written stuck in the 1990s of technology.

This style of plot isn’t for everyone, but I found it a page turner and even when I was skeptical about the title and cover (judging it even) I found myself looking forward to reading more.

Keep an eye out in June for it on your favourite reading list.