Last Breath by Brandilyn Collins and Amberly Collins

With his dying breath, Rayne O'Connor's bus driver uttered four words that would change Shaley O'Connor's life forever. Your father sent me. Shaley can only imagine what this means. But she has no time to think about this because directly after this incident, her mother, the famous Rayne O'Connor, gets hit by a passing car when she pushed into the street by a zealous tabloid journalist. During her hospital stay, Rayne tells Shaley more about her father and why they separated in the first place.

Rayne's injury really serves no purpose except the make the book longer and more dramatic. Wasted page space also makes the book seem longer than it really is. Last Breath really has none of the substance or depth that suspense, especially young adult, desperately needs. It's an empty book that, once again, only tries to set up the third book in this trilogy.

Nothing made any sense to me in the end. There are several plot holes that I can only hope will be explained in the third book. Last Breath is just another below average work produced by an author who's better than this.

Rayne's past, though it could have been interesting, is really very empty and void. Brandilyn could have really expanded on the issue and made this book longer than the first. This could have also led to deeper development of characters or delving into complex issues but it mostly does not.

The characters still haven't developed any personality or imperfection. Like the whole series, they are also empty shells preforming robotic tasks. They show some hints at genuine emotion and personalities but they are in need of more work. The young adult market needs help in all of these areas and I thought that Collins might do something for it but I was disappointed.

Don't waste too much money on Last Breath either. It's one of those books that gets pushed to the back of your bookshelf and forgotten about after a few weeks. Forgetability is one of the worst qualities for any work and is more than anything what is plaguing this series.

1 star

Always Watching by Brandilyn Collins and Amberly Collins

Shaley O'Connor is the only child of a rock star, Rayne O'Connor. She is always travelling around with her mother on music tours. Because of her mother's extreme popularity, they are always the target for tabloids and paparazzi. This becomes even more so when one of Shaley's best friends, her mother's makeup artist, is killed mysteriously one night backstage during a concert. No one knows what to make of it or why anyone would do such a thing.

To say that Shaley delves deeper into the mystery would be huge overstatement. Always Watching is so short, there is hardly any time for anything worthwhile to get accomplished. It's one of the shortest books I've ever read. Although this seems to be expected for this genre I feel that a little more content or complexity would have made it feel more professional.

Because of its length, there is no time for the characters to develop. I don't even know who these people are. Always Watching is like a snapshot of something more to come. The entire book is spent setting up the next one. This is another common tactic that I am not particularly fond of.

I wish that this mystery had been furthered explored and better set up here. As it is Always Watching does not really make me desperate to read the rest. Maybe the future books will make it come together but don't waste your time on this one alone.

1.5 stars

Cast a Road Before Me by Brandilyn Collins

Jessie was orphaned when her mother died tragically in a freak car crash. Jessie herself was a witness to her death.

After her mother's death, Jessie went to live with her aunt and uncle in a small town called Bradleyville. Her aunt was very proud of Jessie and did all she could to keep Jessie with her as long as she could. After leaving Bradleyville for several years and than returning, Jessie discovers that not much changed in her absence. However, when she returned, she found herself swept away in a romance with a local boy.

But slowly yet surely, the townsfolk began to argue with each other and fight over their pay. This soon led to a labor strike and other violence that could not be stopped at any cost.

Collins says the Bradleyville series is for the people who are too afraid to read her "scary" books. While I don't believe any of her books are scary, I do know that the Bradleyville series isn't for the suspense crowd.

At first I thought the Bradleyville series was going to be a good, character-based series that would show off another side of Collins. But I was wrong.

While the characters are imperfect, they lack personality, even though the book is told from a first person perspective of Jessie. And Collins did not resist the untrue notion that all small towns are full of hicks. That's just downright cheesy.

This book has its high points and its low points. Many realistic things happen throughout the book. Some things work out; some things don't. Collins almost made the book have an original end. She had it all set up. But she didn't do it.

Cast a Road Before Me

is a book loaded with original potential, like most of Brandilyn's books are. But in the end, Collins chose the easy road and went with the typical. That's why I can't rate it anything but average.

2.5 stars

Violet Dawn by Brandilyn Collins

One night in the small town of Kanner Lake, Idaho, Paige Williams could not sleep. She went outside to get in her hot tub and found a body floating in it. A dead body. In her hot tub. She frantically tries to hide the body for fear of being framed. But the body is not someone who will go unnoticed. It is the body of a movie star who resides near Kanner Lake.

Vince is the police chief of Kanner Lake with marriage problems. When he hears about the movie star's disappearance, he immerses himself into the case.

But the real killer is still on the loose...and he wants Paige too.

Despite Brandilyn Collins' slogan, my lungs received plenty of oxygen through the mediocre read. People say she's really scary, but I say she's really typical.

Black Mamba, the villain, is very run-of-the-mill. He has no substance; he is simply an animal, thus his name. I can much better appreciate villians who are real people with real problems.

None of the other characters are very good either. They are all very typical.

In the end, I think do not agree with what happens to Paige in regard to her hiding the body. Imperfect leads that have consequences for their mistakes really add to any book. While the book had great potential to be original in this area, Collins steered away from the original. This is one of the things that adds to the shallowness of the plot.

The one saving grace of this book is the lack of a romantic subplot, save for the repairing of Vince's marriage at the end.

2 stars

Brink of Death by Brandilyn Collins

Annie Kingston was a courtroom sketch artist, but now she's running from her past. She has come to settle in a small town and has made friends there. But when one of those friends, her neighbor, dies by the hands of a killer, she feels her world begin to rock again.

The only witness to the murder is her neighbor's twelve-year-old daughter, but she doesn't want to say much. Because of Annie's background as a courtroom sketch artist, she decides to help out by drawing the face the daughter describes. But as she draws it, she begins to recognize it from somewhere in her past...

Please. That storyline is way worn out. All convenient connections are cheesy and childish mainly because they are far from realistic.

The characters are just typical Brandilyn Collins characters. They don't have any distinguishing traits that make you think they are real people. They are all just downtrodden victims of a "scary" villain.

Collins needs help with her villains. The villain is the most stereotypical villain you could ever think of. I like villains with pasts and substance, not mindless animals or killing machines.

Brink of Death

was a very easy read for me, however. Its typical nature made it seem short, therefore I didn't waste much time on it. There is a lot of wasted page space as well.

My main advice for Brandilyn Collins is to focus more on her plot and character development instead of always trying to be "scary".

2 stars

Exposure by Brandilyn Collins

Before reading any of her books we thoroughly researched Brandilyn Collins . What we found didn't surprise us. Her trademark is Seat belt Suspense and her slogan is Don't Forget to Breathe. After reading lots of typical suspense, I wasn't excited about reading Exposure.
Kaycee is a newspaper columnist whose articles tell people about her many phobias and what she has done to face them. But when the same picture of a dead man with blood seeping out of his head keeps appearing throughout her house, she goes crazy. Especially since no one believes her. Every time the police arrive at her house, the picture is gone. They think she's crazy.
Hannah is a teenager who misses her mother. Now that her father has remarried and spends a lot of time with his new stepdaughter, Hannah feels abandoned, so she runs away. The only problem is, a kidnapper interrupts her plans...
Martin and Lorraine Giordani are struggling just to get by, living paycheck to paycheck. Their young daughter, Tammy, is constantly sick with bad coughing. Every extra penny is spent on her. But when a tragedy rocks their family, Lorraine makes a rash decision that changes her future...
All three plots are connected in original ways, though it doesn't seem like it up until the end.
I was pleasantly surprised by what Collins did at the end. I never expected her to do what she did. After bearing with many scenes of Kaycee's craziness, the original end made it all worth it.
Collins did a good job of showing that Kaycee does other things besides see gory photos. The two subplots do a good job of balancing out these such scenes.
Though the book is shorter than most suspense books, it didn't need to be any longer than it was. It was just right. Collins gets straight to the point.
There are several good characters, including Kaycee. This is also something rare for this type of book.
The main problem with the book is the lack of explanation for how the photo of the dead man appeared on every TV channel and on her computer desktop. Collins never explained that part.
All in all, I learned a lesson of not judging the book by its cover...or its author.
4 stars