Customer Reviews

The Glass Cocoon

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

 

 

They met and fell in love inside a chat room. As unlikely a couple one would expect except for that matchmaker the Internet, which sees no artificial human boundaries when it comes to pairing people. Having one divorce under his belt, Cle Elum Washington freelance photographer Phillip Craven never sought love. Taos, New Mexico bookstore owner Patricia Ridgeway is not only married, but also her spouse seems like a nice person who cares and loves Trish. Yet Trish and Phillip are in love and plan to physically share a permanent relationship.

However, someone else apparently objects to the cyberspace love match between Trish and Phillip. Besides crank calls, that individual begins to murder people associated with Trish and Phillip. His girlfriend is decapitated. Her neighbor is mutilated. Phillip rushes to New Mexico to keep Trish safe and using his forensic photography skills tries to help the police capture a vicious murderer before other people die.

THE GLASS COCOON is a thrilling romantic murder mystery starring two likable lead characters. The story line grips the audience who gains a taste of the dark side of cyberspace without needing to understand HTML. Readers will want authors Christopher J. Jarmick and Serena F. Holder to combine their skills with more police procedural-amateur sleuth tales like this entertaining novel.

Harriet Klausner

In this over-emphasized world of cyber-hype I was hesitant to begin this novel when handed it by an acquaintance. Had I followed my first instincts I would have robbed myself of one of the greatest reading adventures of my life! These two authors have created within my own mind images of characters that danced before me like a movie...only much better! Unlike a movie, we were made privy to these characters' deepest thoughts, as well as glimpses into times in their lives that shaped them, yet had no real place within the story itself. It was incredibly written and orchestrated considering the number of plots, sub-plots and characters! I am hoping to read MORE from these two first time authors. Thanks for a wonderfully thrilling way to spend a rainy weekend!

A great read, The Glass Cocoon will meet your expectations and more. Jarmick and Holder have created a suspense thriller with a well-developed plot that includes a wonderful love story, intriguing Internet chat rooms, and murders that kept me guessing until solved. Excellent, too, are the many poems throughout that are a wonderful addition to a great read! Hopefully, these authors will collaborate again because I eagerly await their next thriller.

The idea of a thriller based on the internet interested me, particularly since the book is not an overly technical or science fiction type of novel. I was then amazed with the story of how the authors went about writing it. They wrote this book entirely over the internet and without an outline. They never met each other in person and live in different parts of the country.

So, I started on a wonderful adventure reading this book. It is a wonderful suspense novel. One that I couldn't put down. It had a mixture of many textures and is loaded with interesting characters. The book has so many elements in it, it is almost mind boggling. From a suspense thriller, murder mystery to hightech, erotic romance and even poetry. Poetry that always brought the romance back to reality. Few books I've read capture the emotions of a true and deep love that so many crave as well as this book does. And it does this without slowing down, without detouring or becoming any less exciting or suspenseful.

The two main characters are Phillip Craven and Patricia Ridgeway who live in different states. A friendship and connection is made through the internet and the fantasy becomes more of a reality as shocking and disturbing events begin occurring

The book opens up with a prologue where first Patricia and then Phillip are introduced and right away are in the middle of a horrifying event. We don't exactly understand at first all that has occurred and then the prologue stops and the book backtracks and begins to explain what has happened and the characters and places which are involved. As it does so, it adds layers to the plot, to the characters, to relationships and does so while becoming more suspenseful and interesting.

Phillip's and Patricia's love is tested in many ways and comes to fruition and deepens with the powerful ending.

This is a book that gives us both a wonderful and frightening look at cyberspace. The characters become real. The events even more so. You care about what happens to Phillip and Patricia and their friends that are drawn into their mysterious adventure. You find yourself wanting to go turn your computer off and just write letters. It left me with a new respect and knowledge of how we use the internet. Just as when I am in crowds and always try to keep a watchful eye out for mischief makers, I will do the same when I go into chat rooms.

I certainly hope the authors quickly write the next adventure with their two characters. I look forward to it with great anticipation.

I have rarely felt so strongly about a bad book that I had to write a review. I was really looking forward to reading this novel since the reviews were all excellent--please turn back now if you are even thinking of locating this book! The other reviewers are presenting an alternative reality--or I received a published, yet unedited, first draft.

The authors brag about writing this without an outline, without actually meeting. Well, I have no trouble believing this claim.

The characters (and there are so many) are wooden, despite the extremely overdone development for each of them. So much useless background information is thrown in for each of the characters (nothing some good slash and burn editing wouldn't fix), the reader is left trying to decide what he needs to retain for later. In most cases it really doesn't matter--it never reaches relevancy.

The plot jumps to and fro, without really tying in to the main plot enough for the reader to figure out what is going on and why. When the reader finally figures out where the book is going, he is most likely not going to care anymore.

The mystery was poorly woven--again, someone needed to do some editing. And I wish the authors had had the courage to give us a villain from the characters they painstakingly developed throughout the book. This type of reward to the reader might have led me to give it 2 stars.

Romance? No, sorry. We read a lot of passages about love, how important love is, but we never FEEL love from our wooden characters. I suppose the many poems are supposed to clue us in on the depth of love, instead of dialogue between our characters. Was there a sex scene? Not of the hot, steamy variety. More like "came here, did that, ho-hum."

This book has too many directions, too many disjointed themes. I don't remember being this disappointed in a book for a very long time. I had just finished reading an extremely well written book (The Secret Life of Bees) and early on had to counsel myself not to make comparisons on the writing, to give this one a proper chance to develop.

Let my words be a warning to anyone out there who thinks this might be a good read--just don't!

I love this book.

It could easily be a true story and perhaps is for all we know.
I strongly suspect it's based on some truth.

At first the book plunges us into a horrifying, chaotic world
where people have been brutally murdered. We meet several characters and a few turn out to be the main ones in the book.

We pick up the story all over again from the beginning this time.
It's a gutsy thing when they do something like this in a movie, but I've never come across it in a book before. It could be a little confusing, it definitely throws one a little off balance,
and it's an absolute delight.

The romance, the love story that occurs in this book feels so
real and you can really understand how two people could meet
on something like the internet and fall in love without ever
meeting each other.

But there's so much more going on in both the romance and in the book. There's either a serial killer or stalker or combination of both who is killing people and the killing seems to be directed directly at either one or both of the two internet lovers Patricia and Phillip.

There is beautiful poetry in this book. It fits right into the story as well. Tells us more about the characters, lets us understand the depth and meaning of passion the way so few books do.

There is very hot sex in this book as well, so it is not one for the very timid.

I couldn't recommend this book enough for someone who wants to read something not just entertaining, not just memorable, not just exciting and suspenseful, but written extremely well
by two authors, who like the characters they created met
on the internet.

Wow.

I can't wait until the authors write another one and hope sales of this pick up so that happens sooner than later.