Recently I was beta-reading a book for a friend. He had told me before I began reading that it was a “new-age thriller.” I wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but it sounded intriguing, so I was all in. As I read, though, and the story unfolded, I kept looking for those thriller sequences but they were nowhere to be found. I found myself getting frustrated, wanting to get into the meat of the genre, but the narrative was taking its sweet time. Finally it became clear to me that this book was not a thriller. It had a very few thriller elements, but they actually only occurred in the last 10% of the book and they were not anywhere near the fast-paced, clock-ticking, heart-pounding sequences I was used to (and expected). While the book was good as far as it went, and well-written, it was decidedly miscategorized, and I told him so. Continue reading “Book Descriptions and Broken Promises”