Red River Seven – A.J. Ryan

2.5 stars

I’m finishing this book a little underwhelmed. It has an interesting enough premise: seven people (six really) are on a boat with no idea who they are, where they are, or what they’re supposed to do. The only thing they know is that they have literary names on their arms, each of them has a specialty, and they’ve each had some sort of procedure to induce their amnesia. The boat starts moving, and the characters slowly start to figure out bits and pieces of their purpose in this mysterious location.

Honestly, it was hard for me to get into this. It’s a pretty slow-burn all things considered and takes an awful long time to work up to the action and the drama. The characters don’t know anything about themselves other than their apparent specialty, and unfortunately, that translates into extremely flat characters to read. I didn’t much care about any of them because I didn’t know them. They never gave me a reason to hope for their survival, cheer their successes, etc. And what was going on with Conrad???

I could see this being a game (maybe) where deep diving into characters isn’t as big a deal and you can more easily get away with a more scene heavy as opposed to major plot points, but it didn’t work for me as a book.

I did love the resolution to the issue, though, as I haven’t seen an ending like that for this sort of thing. It was an interesting way for everything to come together for sure! I just wish there would’ve been a little more horror and suspense to round it out.