For The Love of Parvati By Susan Oleksiw

[Sally Balboa]

I received For the Love of Parvati as an advanced readers copy, and just recently finished the book. This novel definitely had its own flavor; it has a very brisk and direct writing style. At times its directness messed with the flow of the story and made it hard to get into. However the story line is an extremely interesting one.

We begin with Anita Ray, as she makes her way into a small village in India. There she finds out that something is not quite right with the going on in the village. There are mysterious clues such as a man found slightly eaten while he was tied up during a monsoon, a man at a roadblock was hiding in the trees with a rather large gun, and the police seem reluctant to answer any of Anita’s questions. Then there is Parvati the ‘simple’ servant without a past. Could she have something to do with all of this?
Even though this was the second book in the series it was very easy to jump into and get a feel for everything without knowing everything. In my experience that’s pretty rare.

I’ll be frank I didn’t like Anita as a character, I found her to be nosey and a bit arrogant at times. Then again she is from another culture and this is a detective series, so if the main character wasn’t nosey there would be a problem.

Overall this novel wasn’t for me. It had some good points and some not so good points but in the end it was a pretty decent read. Recommended for mystery lovers because the author really builds up the suspense.

Overall, I give it three stars.