Blinded By Our Eyes by Clare London

Title: Blinded by Our Eyes
Author: Clare London
Publisher: Carina Press
Length:: Novella – 163 pages
Buy the book: Carina Press

Blurb:
London art dealer Charles Garrett has devoted his life to appreciating and acquiring beauty, both in art and in his companions. His fashionable life is rocked to the core when he discovers the body of a young artist, Paolo Valero, in a pool of blood in his gallery.

As Paolo’s mentor, Charles is haunted by the horror of his violent death. Seeking closure, he investigates Paolo’s past and soon discovers a tangled web of motives and potential suspects, some closer to home than he ever imagined. He’s drawn to Antony Walker, an aggressive, handsome sculptor with unsavory ties to Paolo. Charles is unsettled by Antony’s forceful nature but irresistibly attracted to his passion and his art.

When the evidence points toward Antony’s guilt, Charles is thrown into emotional turmoil. Has he lost his heart to a killer?

Review:

The story is written in first person, which can be a disadvantage in a romance, as it makes it feel one sided. Most romance readers like to get a look inside the heads of both/all the lovers. But on the other hand first person is good for a murder mystery when the narrator is trying to solve the crime. It turns everyone else into a potential suspect and allows the author to conceal information. And the reader can therefore strongly relate to the narrator as they find clues and figure stuff out along with them. I think that on balance in this story the advantages of the use of first person for the mystery aspect outweigh the disadvantages it can have for the romance aspect.

It is still used to good effect for the romance though, especially when describing Charles’ reaction on meeting Antony for the first time. The reaction is very visceral. There’s a mix of attraction and fear. He’s immediately drawn to and yet repelled by Antony, that reaction and his own counter-reaction against it are very interesting.

Charles doesn’t start out very dynamic, to me he doesn’t seem all that driven to solve the murder. But that improves as the story goes on. I like the way he gradually uncovers a lot of things that were going on around him before the murder, right under his nose even, but he was oblivious to them. They show how detached and complacent he had been before. The shock of the murder has shaken him out of that, made him more aware of the world. His attraction to Antony makes him even more so. His senses seem heightened; he notices things he wouldn’t have before.

The Antony character is the one I found most interesting, as soon as he appeared. He’s got an air of danger, but also charisma. He’s sensual, powerful, attractive, but he’s also a suspect for the murder and Charles reads his actions as threatening more than once. But is that his own distorted perception, shocked by the strength of his own reaction to Antony? I’m only sorry that he mellows out a bit too soon for my liking. In fact this is essentially the only complaint I have about the book – I’d rather it was longer! I’d have liked to see more in the middle of the book developing that relationship. Not that I’m saying the ending feels rushed into, I just enjoyed the book enough to want it to fatten up in the middle by about a hundred pages!

There aren’t a large number of sex scenes and those that are there are all that long or explicit, so the concentration is definitely more on the romance, character and plot and there’s room for plenty of it, even though the book itself is relatively short.

The writing is good, the prose style transparent and never confusing. Charles doesn’t have an especially strong and distinctive voice. But in a way that suits him – he’s sort of a grey man among people of brighter colours, with showier personalities than his. He’s a background man who brings the brighter people out into the light. I think that’s why he’s a bit freaked by his own reaction to Antony. He isn’t used to feeling so strongly about anything.

I think it’s one I’ll read again sometime, as murder mysteries are often fun to read over and spot the clues and pointers and establishing missed the first time around.