Salvage by Duncan Ralston

It's not usually a good sign when you keep checking the bottom right of your eReader to find out how far through the story you are and I found myself doing so constantly.  It took me 5 days to read 30% of this book and then I managed the rest in a day through sheer grit, determination and a fervent desire to move on to something else.  I was sorely tempted to just leave this one on my could not finish pile but I did that far too much last year so bribed myself in to finishing it.

The overall idea is a good one but the execution is flawed.  Almost from the off you know where this is going to go and it goes exactly where you would expect - just throws in a few murders along the way.  There are huge plot chasms more or less from the get go and it gives the impression that the author was writing this in snatches around their "real" life and didn't have a synopsis to refer back to.  The biggest one that really grated with me was the magically refilling scuba tanks - nowhere is it mentioned that there is somewhere to refill the tanks or that Owen or Jo have more than one, even a little aside to The Red Pony having a small scuba outlet attached would have covered it.  But no, the tanks miraculously refill every time they are used.  I can't discuss the others because they would give the plot away.

The story is also incredibly s-l-o-w.  It takes forever for more than brow beating and clothes pulling in grief to actually move in to any sort of action and even when it does everything is so leisurely that the tension that could have been created is dissipated in to the silt at the bottom of Chapel Lake.  There are some good sections in the last 15% of the book when the secrets that the lake holds are revealed and the pace picks up; if the book had managed to hold your attention like this last section it would have been incredible.  Instead it has a very strong ending but is so weak and diluted prior to that you may not persevere long enough to get the pay off.

The characters are pretty blah which doesn't help matters.  There was such scope to be had with Owen and Jo but it seemed to be wasted.  Everyone else is a little bit backwoods hillbilly and cliched.  Even Lori is depicted with a couple of broad strokes that make her sound quite boring despite her nomadic lifestyle and the values that Owen tells us she has.

This is a genre I love and have been reading for nigh on 35 years now and I know a stinker when I read one, unfortunately this is one.