Roses for a Diva - Rick Blechta

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review, thank you!

 

I was so glad I was auto-approved by Dundurn, the publisher, that I really wanted to try it immediately, and that's how I came to read Roses for a Diva. I was a nice and quick read, even though it's more than 400 pages long.

 

Marta is a world famous opera singer who's been receiving bouquets of beautiful roses after her performances from a stranger. It doesn't seem to dangerous until Marta finds out this fan/stalker might have invaded her life a lot more than she first expected.

 

I've for some reason always loved books about - normally - the ballet world and now the opera world (which seems at a first glance quite the same). It was one of the parts of this story I enjoyed the most. The story is fast paced, a lot happens, and I was indeed wondering who this stalker could be. The detective-plot could however have been a bit sharper, in my opinion.

 

The book is in Marta's first-person POV, which took some time for me to get used to. I never really like first-person POV and it felt a bit weird in this book. Besides, it is also sometimes changed for a third-person POV with Shannon, Toby and Dan. Marta herself was not really a likeable character either. I get the point she's very famous (or rather infamous) singer, but she's arrogant and always jumps to conclusions in a non-logical way (One of the roses in a bouquet is damaged, this must mean something bad is going to happen to me).

 

One thing that really bothered me, though, was the timing. In the end,

Alan has been stalking her for two years, but his mother only killed herself nine months earlier. Why start the stalking before that?

(show spoiler)

It appears there's another novel by Rick Blechta about Marta, The Fallen One, which is set a few years and deals with a story that is only briefly mentioned in this book. However, I at first didn't know there was another book set before this one, and I'm not quite sure, once again, of the timing fits. But perhaps there is a mentioning of the bouquets in this first novel, so I can't really commend on this. Overall, I enjoyed reading Roses for a Diva, it was a nice, quick read, but it had it's flaws. However, I might check The Fallen One as well...