Customer Reviews

Flashback

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I finished this book the same day I purchased it. For me, it was better than its predecessors; the plot continuously twisted. The amnesia did not seem farfetched, and the presentation of flashes of memory seemed believable. Also, moved at a brisk pace. My only quibble is that at 260 pages it is shorter than I like.

Eve is a smart character,heroic,and with flaws everything I like in a good thriller, heart stopping and a voice that got my attention. EASY MONEY, ICED, SHOT were a great read but the plot in this one got me all the way to the end, like all of Jenny Siler books the best.

Aptly titled, considering the fact that I've had flashbacks from the book ever since I read it. The book so engaged me, and the writing evoked such a clear visual of the story, that I could swear that I saw a movie of the story rather than read a book. I too think that Jenny Siler has taken a giant leap forward in technique with this one...I only hope it gets the kind of attention that it deserves.

"Flashback," by Jenny Siler, starts out with an electrifying scene in a nunnery. The heroine is Eve, a woman whom a group of Benedictine nuns in France take in after she is shot in the head and left in a ditch to die. Eve survives, but her memory is gone. She has no idea who she is or why someone tried to kill her. Occasionally, Eve has nightmares hinting at a tumultuous and violent past that is quite different from her placid existence in the convent. Suddenly, Eve is forced to flee, and since her sole clue is a ferry ticket from Morocco that she finds among her possessions, she decides to travel to North Africa in an attempt to rediscover who she was in her former life.

Eve's journey takes her to Tangier, Marrakech, and eventually, to Bratislava. As she tries to piece together the jigsaw puzzle of her history, she must also avoid those who want her dead. Eve meets a mysterious and handsome man named Brian who may have some of the answers Eve seeks, but will Brian prove to be friend or foe?

Jenny Siler sets up her plot well, and for the first half of the book, I turned the pages quickly to find out what would happen next to this attractive and courageous heroine. Siler handles the exotic locales nicely, and her lively descriptions of Tangier and Marrakech add to the book's atmosphere. I also liked the novel's terse, no-nonsense dialogue.

Unfortunately, the denouement of the book does not have the same energy as the setup, and at the end, the story begins to meander. As Eve travels from place to place, she meets a variety of individuals, each of whom has a piece of the puzzle. Although I like Eve, the other characters in the novel lack depth, and the solution to the mystery is melodramatic and a bit muddy. However, "Flashback" is, at least for the first half, a gripping spy thriller. Once hooked, you will want to hang on to learn the truth about Eve.

The story starts out well enough but soon becomes a mass of coincidences and a travelogue. The book moved quickly and sense of place was excellent. However, I never really had a sense of Eve's character and even less for the supporting characters. She's tough, she's capable of taking care of herself, lots of people die around her, but I wasn't involved enough to really care. So, while I thought it was good, it was far from great.

I have been hungering for a really great action thriller starring a female heroine for a very long time, and Jenny Siler delivered awesomely!

Recommended to me by someone I really didn't know, I wasn't sure what I was gonna get, but Flashback kept me totally enthralled. This is the type of book I love--a strong female lead who isn't over the top unbelievable. I loved how the memories became more emotionally charged as the suspense kept building with each deadly encounter. Jenny Siler has such an awesome touch with the setting, I felt intimately familiar with these completely foreign places.

Add to that a mystery I couldn't solve before the end of the book, an almost romance and the never ending worry about who Eve must have been, what she must have done before she lost her memory and I was hooked until the last page!

I'm gonna get Jenny Siler's other books now and have already made room on my 'keeper shelf' for all of her titles. This is a really, really great read!

Another beautifully written, absorbing thriller from Siler. Her evocative language and sense of suspense and drama kept me going from beginning to end. I loved this book.

Flashback is an extraordinary book - it's difficult to praise it highly enough - six stars maybe?. Jenny Siler never writes formulaic mysteries anyway - since "Easy Money" when she sprang fully mature to the top of the genre, each of her novels has been more tense & atmospheric than the last. Flashback is an investigation by Eve into her own identity. Being left in France for dead, amnesiac, with a gunshot wound to the head, she recuperates with a community of nuns. From her teeth they tell her she's American; from a small scar, they say she had a child - but apart from the only clue to her previous life - a receipt for a ticket on the Tangier-Algeciras ferry - nobody knows who she is or why anybody wanted her dead. When the nuns are massacred - they had come for "the American" they said, Eve flees, taking with her the ferry receipt realising that wherever she is, she will be a danger to others. It involves travel from Marrakesh to Bratislava to discover who wants her dead, but along the way she finds out what kind of woman she is & what she is capable of doing. That she can fight if she must, that she can shoot - but what is she doing in Europe - & North Africa? The writing is beautiful - the plotting emaculate & the atmosphere - created by a background of shifting restless characters & the weather, with vivid descriptions of scents & smells, it creates a tension that grips to the end. I was captivated by the happy ending - I turned the book round & read it again.

This beautifully written thriller kept my interest from the first page to the last. This is the first of Siler's books I've read but it won't be the last.