Justice For Belle
By: Didi Oviatt
Ahnia has a very dicey past – one that is scratching under the surface, just dying to get out.
She’s hit rock bottom, broke and desperate to be on top again. When she finds herself partnering up with man she hardly knows, and who’s utterly untouchable, she’s forced out of her comfort zone and left to question her own sanity.
Will Ahnia and Mac’s dangerous decision be a success, or will she find herself in the clutches of an unforgiving force, brought about by her childhood sin?
In this nail biting thrill ride, no one is as they seem… and no one is truly safe with those they trust. – Goodreads
Justice For Belle is a psychological thriller novella. Novellas are a great way to build take a relatively simple story and give it a great pacing and execution as is the case with Didi Oviatt’s latest release. Justice For Belle doesn’t thrive on a lot of characters. In fact, it is more of a character study of our main character Ahnia who has a fascination with death. Not particularly her death but envisioning how others can be murderers and how they would commit their murders unique to them. This gives Ahnia a special angle right from the start and makes it intriguing to see how she has become this way and what secrets she hides in her past that has caused her to have this fascination, especially after seeing that she is a one hit wonder writer who thrived on a past personal experience. It gives Ahnia depth as the story lets us learn more and more about her. Opposite of her is Mac, who she meets randomly and has this attractive quality that makes Ahnia drawn to him. He is fairly spontaneous and being as the novel angles behind Ahnia, Mac becomes even more mysterious especially when there is a few mysteries that come out like the similarity of his fiancee’s appearance to Ahnia or his similar psychological fascination and of course, he goes one step further to create another adrenaline rush scenario that will hopefully trigger both him and Ahnia’s creative juices to write another book. Its an absurd and dangerous idea to say the least and it makes Mac feel even more mysterious than Ahnia is and the extent of how their plans will play out. Both of these characters are very strong and have a great deal of depth of them which makes them the more intriguing to see how their story unravels.
There’s always a risk in novels who want to dive into the more romantic thriller side and that is generally how Ahnia and Mac’s relationship seems to have that forbidden love element to it and a certain level of danger that attracts them both to each other. It is really in these moments that don’t quite work for me and feel somewhat unnecessary. Its starting to feel like attraction is a hard element to put into stories and they are very subjective because different writing will work better (or worse) than others. In this case, the general writing style works however, when it goes into the more intense moments once or twice, it feels a bit overwritten.
Overall, Justice For Belle is pretty good. It has a decent execution and stay well-paced. There are a lot of questions and mysteries bundled together in this psychological thriller that all gets cleared up by the end. The two characters are created with a good deal of depth and layers as they unravel throughout the story as well. It stays pretty much intriguing. While there are little bits of writing in terms of the story development for the relationship between Ahnia and Mac, everything else does work too create enough suspense.
Goodreads: 3/5 (I’d give it 3.5/5 to be more accurate)
***Book received for free in exchange for honest review from R&R Book Tours***
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