Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I’ve read the first 50 pages of this FBI procedural, which I accessed for free through Amazon’s First Reads program, and I’m not going to waste any more time on it. The story itself is not particularly credible. A woman who’s suffered serious abuse at the hands of a killer becomes an FBI agent and is assigned to another murder allegedly committed by the person who tried to kill her? With everything we know about PTSD and conflicts of interest and not putting agents in positions to have their credibility challenged in court, it just doesn’t sound like an assignment the FBI would make. So, from the get-go, I was unwilling to suspend my disbelief. The first 50 pages are loaded with backstory that again is not particularly credible and reads like an "information dump." And the writing itself just isn’t very good, bordering at times upon the melodramatic, if not the hysterical and non-specific. As just one example: “She dragged her eyes back to the nightmare playing out before her…” is how the author chooses to describe the MC watching a news report. The author sets this in DC, but really makes no use of the setting. The characters are one-dimensional and not compelling. And the author has not yet learned the difference between telling readers what to feel and creating characters and situations that evoke readers’ feelings. Two stars and that’s a gift.