Prey [Kindle Edition]

Linda Howard is (was?) one of my favourite authors but this was just dire. Constant repetition of information to recap the plot thus far, unnecessary viewpoints from the baddie and astonishingly a bear! Gratuitous violence (bear mauling people), minute details about every step taken and decision made by the hero and heroine, a sudden declaration of love after years of hate and no interaction seemed shoe horned in as though the author remembered she used to write romances. It was actually painful trying to read this and seemed more like a sub-standard first novel rather than the umpteenth book from such a talent.

LH is an autobuy at my local library and I expected to have to reserve this title, but I walked in and there were two copies sitting on the shelf, neither of which had been checked out as yet. There was a reason for this. This book is pretty c***.

By chapter 3, we'd learned about the (lack of anything that interesting in the) history between the leads...and we'd been inside the mind of a bear which we'd been told had already had a taste of human flesh, and who then proceeded to lunge for a lamb, but missed, but then scented another human on the wind...which it then proceeded to crunch on. We got the unfortunate victim's name, his thoughts on whether his girlfriend was The One or not, his background, his education,his girlfriend's thoughts, her name, then he died....WHY???

By page 50, we additionally had the POV of the local estate agent, and Dare had been coerced into tracking Angie and her two guests into the wilderness, based on a bad hunch that the estate agent had about the guys. By page 60, we had been told which of the guests was the baddie, not that the one who was to be the victim was pristine himself, and why he was a baddy and what he was planning.

I went on to read the novel, but I did wonder why I'd bothered. She hasn't written a decent tale since Cover Of Night in 2006. Every hardback release since then bears her name, is sold at an exorbitant price, but is NOT the LH of old. Some of them even have inaccurate synopses of the book on the back cover, almost as if the editor and publisher couldn't really have read the book before publication. ICE's cover has mention of 'a killer' when there is more than one, UP CLOSE AND DANGEROUS's cover mentions an increasing body count, but there isn't even anyone killed!

If you care to look, you will see that her publicity picture hasn't changed in years, nor has her bio. I have wondered whether she has a ghost writer who is fleshing out novellas/plots that she hashed out years ago and never got round to finishing - whatever the reasons for that might be. I miss the old LH, and this is definitely the last one that I will ever read.

I have enjoyed reading LH's books for many years.
Some of which have been superb, most have been excellent.
But what has gone wrong! I struggled to even finish this book. As a previous reviewer said - I am not even sure LH has written or even read this book.
There was so much repetition, so much filler that is was difficult to feel the suspense which the book intends.
This will be the last book I buy. I paid £7.53 for this book via Amazon, it wasn't worth anywhere near this amount, if I read any more of LH it will be from the library.