This is my first time participating in the #FridayFiveChallenge and I was surprised how much I could do in five minutes when I tried.

Here are the rules from the #FridayFiveChallenge creator Rosie Amber:

Get yourself a cuppa and give yourself 5 minutes.

In today’s online shopping age, readers often base their buying decisions from small postage stamp size book covers (Thumb-nails), a quick glance at the book description and the review. How much time do they really spend making that buying decision?

AUTHORS – You often only have seconds to get a reader to buy your book, is your book cover and book bio up to it?

My Friday Five Challenge is this….. IN ONLY FIVE MINUTES….
1) Go to any online book supplier,
2) Randomly choose a category,
3) Speed through the book covers, choose one which has instantly appealed to your eye,
4) Read the book Bio/ Description for this book,
5) If there are reviews, check out a couple,
6) Make an instant decision, would you BUY or PASS?

And so, here is my contribution –
I chose Romantic Suspense:

Find a copy here from Amazon.com

This caught my eye because of the moody color and ‘frayed’ emotional feeling. It screams suspense and intrigue. Especially since the other romantic suspense covers look more like romance than suspense.

Book Price is listed at $3.99 for Kindle but it’s free right now.

Book Description: Thirty-one year old Grace Ellery survived being stabbed multiple times in Ohio. Two years later, she moves to Murray, Virginia to get a new lease on life.

On her first day of substitute teaching, her new life is nearly cut short when she finds herself in the middle of a shooting that leaves a married couple dead. Luckily, she is saved by Sam Meadows, a cardiologist, but the shooter has disappeared by the time the police come around.

When the shooter tries to kill Grace again, Sam and Grace realize that the killer won’t stop until she is dead. With a killer who has nothing to lose, the question isn’t if the killer will attack again, but when and who will be in the crosshairs. A romantic suspense wrapped in the aspects of life: love, family, forgiveness, danger, and death.

Number of pages 288/46,000 words.

Reviews: Mixed – There are a total of 250 reviews on Amazon.com and 99 of them are 5*.

I skimmed a few and noted several mentioning how ‘different’ the format was – with each chapter being in a different character’s point of view (hero, heroine and villain) AND in a different time-line. I’m not sure how a 46,000-word story would flow with that type of formula. I would think it would feel a bit disjointed but it was mentioned that once you get used to it, the writing is engaging, and the story was tense and exciting. I did read a 1-star review because I always do that and wasn’t sure what to make of it. The reviewer implied a political message on the part of the author and then complained the h/h slept together after the second meeting (not something that reviewer appreciated) and that book ended with a cliffhanger. The same reviewer, in responses to challenging comments on that review, clarified that all sex was behind closed doors and that the story didn’t end on a cliffhanger after all. It was the excerpt of the next book that ended with “to be continued”. I’d say that’s to be expected. Basically, for me, at least, the entire 1-star review was discredited because of those misleading parts of the it (which you had to dig into the comments to see).

Would I BUY or PASS?…… BUY

Analysis
I went back and forth with the decision whether to buy or pass on this book. It’s free, though, so ‘buy’ isn’t the right word. I love the cover, and the book’s description intrigued me. Someone who thinks she’s escaped from a murderer only to find she’s still a target? It’s the stuff of nightmares. Since it’s ‘romance’ I know there will be a happily ever, so after all that tension, there’s the promise of a satisfied sigh. Who can resist that? And for free, no less. The reason I wasn’t sure about it was the POV and time-line switches mentioned in the reviews. But… that just might add to the intrigue. If not, I won’t buy the second book. If so, I’ll buy it eagerly. And, in all honesty, one of the main factors in my decision to buy this is that rather rude and misleading 1-star review.