It’s that time again, time for me to take a break from all the writing and worrying if my own work is up to snuff and look at someone elses creation. In short: it’s time for an ebook review!

Snow White by the Safina Deforge team (there’s actually two writers credited in these works Safina and Mark Williams) is both a cute story with it’s elements that hark back to the classic tale of Snow White (the pomme rouge aka red apple, Queenie, Detective Cassandra “Red” Rose, etc) and a gritty, gripping detective tale.

Lemme go ahead and get this out of the way, be prepared dear readers a rare and magnificent accurance is about to happen: I’m going to gush all over someone! I’ve up to this point not read an ebook with such polish. Not once. Not when I was reading Stephen King’s “UR” not when I read the famous J.A. Konrath’s “Entraped” (review to come – eventually) not once – ever!

At no point while reading this book did I feel like shouting: show me don’t tell me.

At no point while reading this book did I feel like shouting: show me don’t tell me. Never did I feel trapped inside of the characters head, seperated from the action while they spent time mulling over their options and the reasons behind their choices. Not onces was there ever a leading bit of subterfuge that didn’t pay off! The pace was perfect, from the first paragraph to the last I found it difficult to find a moment to even put the book down, even for essential bathroom and writing breaks (yes I blame this book for the lack of words I’ve churned out this month and gladly!).

In fact this book was so well written, I had to search really hard to find something to complain about but search I did. Partly because there are a few tiny bits that should be addressed by the Safina Deforges team and mostly because I’m the sad type of person that’s always meanest to the ones I love, it’s genetic I can’t help it.

Misplaced quotation marks, at first I thought I’d just be nitpicking to bring that up at all – but there really where a lot of them missing, or spaced oddly around the dialogue. There was also the occasional random paragraph indent where it didn’t belong, those cropped up mostly after the 75% mark and were really annoying that deep into the plot. Lastly but never least, there’s that little bit where the whole “Snow White” angle just seemed to kind of get lost and wander away at some point. I never did understand the significance of the villain hiding all the red things, there was no poisoin and I’m not sure whether I liked their decision not to name the Prince or not.

My biggest annoyance though? That would have to be Pippa – she just didn’t have enough of a ‘lovable’ side. In the rare moments when Red does get stuck in her head, it’s about Pippa. Even Red wonders what she sees in the bigoted, cold, controlling, high class low manners, snobbish lawyer who seems determined to take all cases that her partner brings to court.  Isn’t that – a conflict of interest of the highest degree? Do they really let people do that in Brittain? Why whould she even want to? Ugh – PIPPA!

Other than that, buy the book buy it now and never regret it. Ever. I’m so in love with this book only an empty bank account kept me from snagging the other book from the Safina Deforges team currently out. Well worth every penny!

One last thing – buy the British version!  I don’t think that British Detective novels will translate well to US Detective novels, mainly because ours have guns – and tend to use them. There are several scenes that really wouldn’t have ‘worked’ if Red had a gun and wasn’t afraid of using it and I’m almost certain that the effect of the entire story would be diminished with those changes. Whereas that whole ‘contempt’ of firearms things is understandable for a Brit.