Conscience Point by Erica Abeel is the story of Maddy Shaye, a woman “with all the luck,” who seems to have it all: she has a successful career as both a concert pianist and an arts reporter, is in love with adoring Nick and has a close relationship with her grown daughter Laila. But then everything starts to unravel...Eight pages into Conscience Point, I nearly gave up on it: Abeel’s overuse of ellipsis points was driving me crazy (they appear about 20 times in those eight pages), plus the sex scene made me cringe.* Luckily, I chastised myself for my lack of perseverance–surely the book deserved at least a 50-page chance!—and picked it up again. Ironically enough, after page 8, the ellipses all but disappear and the story quickly picks up the pace.
Although the book is mostly written in the third person, it begins with—and occasionally lapses into—a first-person segment that make it clear that Maddie is actually writing her own story, a “faux memoir,” as she calls it. This device worked well: although I sometimes found the writing style frustratingly cryptic (or at least there were many references that sailed over my head), Maddie’s character is so well developed and so believable that it was Maddie I was frustrated with and not Abeel.
My favourite part of the story was the Gothic mystery—in the end I tore through the book to find out what had happened—and this despite the fact that I found the idea of the love triangle fairly distasteful. Although this book was not an easy read—it was definitely outside my comfort zone—I’m glad I gave it a second chance.
To read other reviews of this book, visit these blogs:
Booking Mama • Bookstack • Diary of an Eccentric • Linus’s Blanket • Literary License • Savvy Verse & Wit • S. Krishna’s Books
To read an interview with the author, visit this site:
Novel Journey
Thank you to the author for sending me this book to review.
This book review is part of the Spotlight Series tour for Unbridled Books. Visit the Spotlight Series site for a list of other tour stops.
*I later reread it and it didn’t seem that bad.
