I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.
Mild spoilers ahead.
In The Cana Mystery, we have ancient artifacts (supposedly owned by Jesus Christ) re-discovered in the modern day and the ‘thrilling’ chase by one genius know it all and her bumbling well meaning buffoon of a boring love interest to secure their safety. The book takes us through the United States, Egypt, Malta and Italy with a narrative weaving between past and present day.
First things first, I would like to express my disbelief over the 5-star ratings this book has received on Goodreads. And some reviewers comparing this to Indiana Jones and Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon make me very perplexed. I do not understand where all the love is coming from.
The Cana Mystery is a very awkwardly written book, with strange sentence constructs and odd paragraph breaks. It feels as if the writer wanted to jam in as many words as possible in some chapters and write the barest of outlines in others. You know when you watch a TV show or a movie with subtitles, you start reading the subtitles because the acting is so bad that you need a distraction, and then you further feel like you are watching a bad play? That’s how reading the dialogues and conversations made me feel.
The basic plot seemed intriguing enough – I am a sucker for anything with history and artifacts. The book stressed me out in parts when I realized Beckett loves a high body count – there were so many murders and killings, I lost count, and this was in the first half of the book itself. I couldn’t really care about the artifacts themselves because of the overly simple back story and yawn, yet another doomsday prediction hidden in them.
Ava, the so called brilliant academic (who is barely 25) came across as such a smug know it all who makes terrible decisions, that even the learning for me was tempered with annoyance. This is one character I disliked with her stubborn misguided insistence on being ‘independent’ and misreading situations all the time. She came across as one of those people you meet in life who love to correct you and insist on being right. There was no sense of adventure, no joy of learning or even sharing knowledge. Much of my irritation stems from this character.
Two stars because I am feeling generous and also because there were parts in the book that were fraught with tension. Otherwise, if you want to read something that belongs to the genre, pick up a Dan Brown or even better, old school Wilbur Smith.
What did I just read? 