Killing Time by Linda Howard

Hero: Knox Davis
Heroine: Nikita Stover
Grade: D+

In 1985, with much fanfare, a time capsule was buried under the front lawn of a small-town county courthouse, to be reopened in 2085. But just twenty years later, in the dead of night, the capsule is dug up, its contents stolen. That same night, one of the contributors to the capsule is brutally slain in his home - with no sign of forced entry or indication of a struggle. One by one, others who had placed items in the time capsule are murdered.

Besides his suspicions about the sudden, mysterious appearance of Nikita Stover, the chief investigator, Knox Davis, has absolutely no leads. And while Nikita's no murderer, she seems to be hiding plenty of secrets. With more at stake than anyone else realizes, the smart-talking Nikita is determined to catch this cunning killer - while at the same time battling her own deepening feelings for a man and for a world in which she doesn't belong.

Alright, I participated in the July TBR Challenge over at Brianna's Mommy blog, and I finished it!! Woo hoo!

Title: Killing Time
Author: Linda Howard
Year published: 2005
Why did you get this book? I bought it the day it came out because I'm a fan of Linda Howards, but I never did get around to reading it, until the challenge was issued.
Do you like the cover? Yeah, it's sexy.
Did you enjoy the book? Not really, the only thing I enjoyed about this book was the hero, Knox Davis.
Was the author new to you and would you read something by this author again? No, I'm a LH fan and have been for years and even though I didn't really care for this book, I didn't hate it enough to give up on LH, not yet anyway.
Are you keeping it or passing it on? I'm keeping it only because I want to own all of LH's books, I'm retarded like that.

And now the review...

Dear Mrs. Howard,

I'm taking a page out of Jane and Jayne's blog, over at Dear Author because I thought it was imparative that I write you a letter about your book, Killing Time.

Killing Time started out weird and ended weird. I mean, you ended the book with paper...PAPER? What was that all about? Yeah, maybe because paper to me is in such abundant supply these days, I take it for granted but I just didn't see the big deal about the whole paper thing, in my opinion, the book fell flat on it's face with that whole thing. And since I'm talking about that part, Nikita's kids grandparents are older than they are, how effing retarded is that? You see, making time travel more like air travel just didn't really work for me in your story, I can usually take time travel well enough, I love it all in Karen Marie Moning's books, I loved it in Son of the Morning, but I sooo didn't like it in Killing Time, but that might have to do with the fact that I didn't really like Killing Time.

It was a good story, but it felt rushed, like you were working on Cover of Night at the same time and you couldn't be bothered to work some kinks out of Killing Time before the deadline. Another thing I didn't really care for is there was no real drama that Knox and Nikita had to work through because they were always one step ahead of the killer, it was all so easy for them. Where's the fun in that? There wasn't. It was like, okay I didn't get to appreciate them working hard to get to the bottom of the case because everything was just so easy for them.

And then, it all ended so abruptly. I mean, everything unravels literally in the last few pages of the entire book. Why you thought that would be cool, I'll never know. But it was like, okay all this happened throughout the book now hurry up and end this so that I can move on to the next book. There wasn't even a proper build up to the end either, it was too neat and too tidy and there was just no fun in it.

I don't think I could recommend this book with all the enthusiasm that I usually reserve for an LH, because I felt cheated, which is saying something because I'm easily pleased but pleased I was not while reading this book, not only did it take three months to read (compared to the usual day and a half that I usually take to read a book) but it just wasn't up to par with the rest of your books.

And Nikita being a well, you know what she was? What the hell was that about? And then all that futuristic stuff, they don't use water to bathe in the future? What the hell do they use? How the hell can you get clean without using water to bathe? The future you painted in this book is totally not something I'm looking forward to reading more about, I could care less that there were all those cool little gadgets, gadgets from the future, all of that was just really blah to me and I just couldn't be bothered to like this book very much.

And what about the whole cotton thing? Cotton is only for the extremely wealthy in the future? What the crap was that about? Hmm, okay...whatever.

Another thing I hated about this book was that you took someone I really liked in the book and made him hate on my team, USC. Don't ever do that again, all in all, the book wasn't the worst book I've ever read, I even liked it more than Gregory's book, which surprises me since it took me only a day to read that book and like five days to read yours but still, I think the only saving grace this story had was with the hero, Knox Davis is one sexy ass stud. I love those southern boys and Knox Davis is truly one hero that I'll be lusting after for years and years, he was even better than Lucas Swain and I was really crushing on Lucas when reading his book, I wish I could say that Knox's story was top notch but it fell short of that.

The whole Rachel and Rebecca thing was disturbing, but more than disturbing I just though it was pretty stupid. Rachel got exactly what she deserved at the end, so good on Byron on that score, I mean, you had this whole story centered around all these killers and the story BEHIND all of that was so simple and so retarded that I was pissed that I actually read the whole story only to find out the whole reason why all the killings were happening was because of that lame ass reason.

In conclusion, the book dragged on and on about inconsequential things and I just didn't really care for the book all around. I'm not kidding when I say the only highlight of this book was Knox Davis, his sexiness was probably what got me through this book, Nikita was an OKAY heroine, the storyline was just OKAY, the futuristic stuff was like pulling teeth for me, the secondary characters were just OKAY, a disappointing read this was for me.

Please, don't ever write another story like this because this one tanked.

Sincerely,
Dylan