Ami's Hoard

3.5 stars

Walk a Mile is a sequel to a book released in 2010 entitled Unspeakable Words; you could say that it took 4-years in the making *laugh*. Just as a small recap for those who never read the first book, in Unspeakable Words , FBI Agent Jerry Lee Parker was reassigned to help another agent John Flynn, with a cold case called The Grimm Fairy Tale murder, when a magical artifact bestowed Flynn with power of telepathy. This sequel happens six months later…

Okay, let me start with what bothered me first … or the reason why I couldn’t give this higher than a 3.5-stars rating. Six months later, with Jerry and Flynn now partnered in both professionally and personally, I sensed that there were a LOT of issues basically in terms of communication between these men. I felt that their relationship was not exactly equal.

You see, Flynn, being a telepath, could easily pick up on what Jerry was thinking – the thoughts that Jerry couldn’t keep inside his ‘soundproof booth’ – but he never really shared what was important to Jerry. Not his personal feelings, not his family problems, not even things related to his job. Jerry was left to guess or to tip-toe around Flynn’s feelings.

However, before this part was even resolved, our agents were once again struck with a magical artifact that put Jerry and Flynn in each other’s shoes a.k.a. body swapping. Yep, Jerry and Flynn switched bodies.

Sure, this event made Jerry learn more about his partner – because now he could read Flynn’s mind, he could read what people thought about Flynn, including Flynn’s family and old friends. But to me, this felt like cheating… like it was taking an ‘easy’ plot to tackle the big issue of communication. I was never a huge fan of that. Because it didn’t really solve ANYTHING. Flynn still had this huge wall of privacy that he would not share with Jerry. The relationship was still not equal in my eyes. It just added another problem for both men. Especially since Flynn never saw his telepathic power as a gift, it was more of a curse to him.

I was also having a bit of a problem keeping track of who was whom during the body swapping. I guess it was a plot that works better for me visually (like in the ‘Freaky Friday’ movie) rather than in text. There were also few scenes that were just … weird for my taste.

Another thing that bothered me was that there wasn’t any progress of the initial case, the one that brought Jerry and Flynn together. In addition, Jerry and Flynn were supposed to focus on the magical artifact, but once again there was ‘another case’ that was introduced near the end, which threw away the focus of the magical artifact. It was a similar issue to the first book, where the serial killer case was thrown away because of the magical artifact. It was like these cases were never really solved!! As a murder-mystery fan, I was quite annoyed with it.

Having said that, the last chapter of this book just brought a HUGE TWIST that I didn’t see coming. Ms. Madison raised up the ante most definitely, and it left me reeling. REELING, I tell you!! I couldn’t believe she would do that to these men!! It was a game changer and what justified me with the extra 0.5 stars for my rating. One thing’s for sure, I truly hope that this doesn’t mean I have to wait for another 4 years to get the answer.