Author: Reinaldo DelValle
Publisher: Smashwords
Rating: WARTY!
This is another novel with a prologue which I promptly skipped. If the author doesn't think it's worth putting it into chapter one or beyond, then I don't think it’s worth my time reading it. I've adopted this policy consistently with novels and have never had any cause to regret it or feel like I've missed something important. That nicely confirms for me everything I've felt about prologues!
It’s set in Boston in 1885. Silas has lost his memory, but is inexplicably taken onto Inspector Belloc's police team which is investigating the murders of teenaged girls, all of whom are pregnant. Silas meets Polly - another of Belloc's team - who doesn’t like Silas, which automatically announces loudly and clearly that the two will become an item. Yawn.
Polly has a secret which we don't learn about until we're almost half way through. Indeed, nothing happens up to the half-way point. We don't learn a single thing about Silas except that he's probably a fully-trained ninja (which no one else, not even Silas, seems to grasp). Indeed, it's not until around that half-way point that we even hear of the titular Valentine Circle, so my recommendation is not to read this, but if you do read it, then start at the half-way point - you will not really miss anything imnportant.
This story was p-o-n-d-e-r-o-u-s-l-y slow. I mean it was r-e-a-l-l-y slow. It was t-e-d-i-o-u-s-l-y slow. And did I mention that it's v-e-r-y slow? How slow is it? I'm glad you asked. This novel is so slow that even the hare beats it.
I'm serious. It moved achingly slowly and some things were telegraphed w-a-a-y ahead of time, and page after page after page went crawling by with little-to-nothing happening. The story wasn't trashily bad, and the writing was decent - spelling, grammar, etc, but it was so lumberingly slow that I could not honestly stand to read any more of it. I have better things to do with my time. Maybe you will have better luck with it than I did, but I cannot in good conscience recommend this one except as a risk-free alternative to sleeping pills.
