face of deception |

Summary:
An unidentified skull…
A trail of terrifying secrets…
And a woman whose talented hands could reveal the shocking truth…
As a forensic sculptor, Eve Duncan helps identify the dead from their skulls. With her own daughter murdered and her body never found, the job is Eve’s way of coming to terms with her personal nightmare. But more terror lies ahead when she accepts work from billionaire John Logan. Beneath her gifted hands a face emerges from the skull he has given her to reconstruct-a face no one was ever meant to see. Now Eve is trapped in a frightening web of murder and deceit. Powerful enemies are determined to cover up the truth, and they will make certain that truth goes to the grave…even if Eve gets buried with it.
Review:
Hello dear readers, I’m very sorry that I haven’t reviewed any books lately and that I missed Top Ten Tuesday yesterday. I’ve been on spring break and was out and about all week. I did get to read two books, both of which I talked about in the WWW Wednesday post.
I’m reviewing The Face of Deception by Iris Johansen. I haven’t reviewed anything by her yet and I’m a little excited. But also a bit nervous to see what everyone thinks. So please be kind. 🙂
Onto the review! Iris Johansen is one of my all-time favorite authors. Some of her books helped me fall in love with reading. This book was no different. I loved almost everything about this book The characters were fantastic, which I’ll go into more detail about later. The way that this book is written was something I really enjoyed. While reading The Face of Deception you get to read a little bit of each character’s perspective. The book jumps around between characters as things are happening and you see what is happening at that moment for each person. At first, I thought this was going to irritate me, but I ended up really liking that I got to know all the characters, rather than just two or three. Another thing about how Johansen wrote this book is that she beats around the bush for so long with what’s actually going on to keep up suspense. Let me tell you, it worked. By the time we actually found out what was going on, I thought I was going to explode. The last thing I liked about how the book was written was the descriptions. They helped me picture everything happening vividly in my head and that’s basically my favorite thing about reading. So just for her descriptiveness Johansen gets my love.
Now, the characters I’ve just fallen in love with. Eve Duncan makes her first, but not last, appearance in this book. As soon as you hear Eve’s story, you can’t help but fall in love with her, to want to become part of her life and help her with her struggles. It’s obvious right away that Eve has pushed herself very hard to get to where she is all because of what she’s been through. You can tell that she’s a strong and independent woman who can handle herself in most situations. This is something she proves again and again throughout the book.
Then comes Joe Quinn, Eve’s best friend. Joe is the one who’s been there for her every step of the way. He’s a cop, which becomes very obvious the more you read. He has the mentality that Eve needs to be taken care of all the time which slightly irritated me. Because he thinks like this he thinks it’s okay to baby her. Joe is completely loyal to Eve in every way. She says jump, he asks how high. Their relationship frequently gets in the way of the relationship with his wife, Diane. I wasn’t terribly fond of Diane. She makes herself seem fake by hanging out with Eve and Eve’s mother even though she resents the friendship between Joe and Eve. Overall, I liked Joe well enough but I sometimes got super mad at him for treating Eve like a child.
My favorite character in this book, after Eve, of course, is John Logan. Logan’s a billionaire that basically manipulates Eve into doing what he wants her to. He’s the typical billionaire asshole that everyone loves to hate. When in reality Logan’s trying to do the right thing, even if that means bringing Eve into something kind of dangerous. The reason I love Logan so much is that even though he’s pretending to be an asshole he starts to really care about Eve. When we first meet him, he seems like someone that everyone hates, but the more you read the more his character develops and the more I fell in love with him. He shows Eve that he’s an actual person and that he knows what pain is just like she does. By the end of this book, I’d decided that if I could trade places with Eve, I would, regardless of all that she went through. I’d trade places with her for the sole reason of being with John Logan forever.
There are quite a few other characters in this book, but some of them I’m not mentioning because it will give too much away. And others I really just have too many feelings about them or not enough. The three I mentioned are the three most important and my three favorites.
There was, however, one thing I didn’t very much like in this book. Although I can see it was necessary for the story. There was quite a bit of violence starting about a third of the way through the book. It wasn’t the violence that bothered me, it’s a book about a woman who reconstructs skulls there’s obviously going to be violence, it was more the characters it was directed at. It’s like, she makes me fall into this story and starts hurting the people I care about. The fact that this is the only thing that I didn’t like about the book is a good thing in my opinion. I’m basically just complaining that my friends are getting hurt. And that’s all I can complain about? I’d say Johansen did pretty well.
The Face of Deception was nothing less than the perfection I expected it to be. It was suspenseful. It kept me on the edge of my seat, dying to know what was going to happen next. I fell more and more in love with the characters and story itself with each page I turned. I suggest this book if you’re into more mystery type books.

Keep on reading lovelies, Amanda.

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