Song of the Robin

I read this book without actually choosing it like I would normally. I met Mr. Biggs on a Forum and he mentioned Song of the Robin was up on NetGalley. I was an approved NetGalley reader, so thought I'd give it a go.

The title is not conducive to selecting this book. Sounds kind of romance-y and not my thing at all. It starts like a contemporary romance, but I proceeded. 

Then the book became a mysterious tale of a woman, Sarah, who begins to see visions, flashes of things that looked vaguely familiar, like the tall man who keeps showing up in weird places, then disappearing again. Sarah is perplexed by this stalker, particular since he's transparent sometimes. She begins to doubt her own sanity as more strange occurrences plague her life. She goes home from work and discovers that nothing of hers is in her house. She figures her no-good husband has tossed all her things in the rubbish. 

She reveals some of the strange occurrences to her best friend, Rachel, but hesitates to put too much of a paranormal spin on what's going on. After all, she wasn't crazy or was she?

So the reader is slowly dragged into Sarah's visions changing the contemporary romance into something far more sinister. She sees herself in two realities, skipping through time and place without knowing how she got to where and when she is.

There is a little bit too long segment in the book on her life story. When that began and carried on for several pages I became impatient to get back to the crazy hallucinations plaguing Sarah. Eventually, we the readers are given enough information to suss out what has happened to Sarah. It's weird and imaginative story telling which I accidentally stumbled on via NetGalley and I'm quite glad I did.

Still, Mr. BIggs, think about cutting a little bit out of that middle sections (you know the one) because the pace begins to lag and you might very well lose some readers. That's my only niggling complaint.

I will be posting this review on GoodReads as I do with every book I read in its entirety.

This was an interesting read.  I enjoyed the parts where Sarah was trying to figure out what was happening to her.  The parts about her actual life were not as enjoyable to me.  I have read the blurb for the second book in this series and am curious to find out how the author stretches this story to fit.

This is an intense psychological read. The prologue puts you on edge right away because you don't know precisely what is going on. Then within the main book itself, it seems as if we are thrown into a completely different world. The author has pulled off an intense deep third-person perspective. We feel like we're living in the protagonist's head. Yet the author us able to pull this off without it feeling like it is just navel-gazing. The protagonist is truly struggling through a difficult time in her life, so her sometimes physical, emotional, or mental paralysis makes sense given her thoughts as well as what is going on in her life as it unravels. We are truly on the journey with her; I read a lot, and I don't see a lot of authors pulling this off successfully without making the protagonist thoughts seeming too selfish or is if they think themselves the center of the world. I love a good psychological drama, and this is one of them.

Sarah lives a life that is ordered and routine, so when she sees a ghostly figure waving at her and he keeps appearing in different places, she decides to find out who he is.
Sarah begins to have strange dreams, hears whispered voices and finally has visions and she wonders if she is going mad. The reader is taken on this journey with her and this is well done by the author.
Certain parts of the book however are too long and not interesting enough to hold readers attention and could easily be reduced.
I like the cover but not the title, it doesn't do the book justice. It doesn't make me think of mystery/thriller which this book is.
A good, well written read.

Song of the Robin is a weirdly mysterious, intense psychological read! Sarah hears voices whispering to her, and she is having strange dreams. She begins to doubt her own sanity as these and other strange occurrences plague her life. The author puts us on the edge right away as he takes us on this mysterious, imaginative journey. I liked this book. I liked the author’s writing style and the character development. I am looking forward to reading more from this author. I would like to thank Netgalley, the publisher and the author for providing me with an advance reader copy in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion of this book.