Review # 224: The Puppet's Secret by Alex Samms

Deception and desire at the edge of reality...

Description:

     A fictional novella about Angela, a middle-aged woman, whose feelings of lust, hate, and obsession towards an alluring stranger bring her to the brink of insanity. "A tale of romance that never was, and the consequences one must pay for the choices one makes..."

Review:

     I did not expect to find myself engrossed in a fifty-two page short-story, especially since the book blurb was so vague, but I was pleasantly surprised by the subject matter. I have always wondered - what drives a person to their breaking point? Is it a gradual change in behavior? A quick-footed mental "trigger"? Or is every person's psychological profile different? How does one contemplate crime or murder without veritable reason or motive? The Puppet's Secret by Alex Samms describes the mundane life of Angela, a wife and mother, who descends into madness after a chance "encounter" with a man at a local beach. Readers experience Angela's emotional and behavioral changes firsthand through a journal-like narrative, her secrets and disillusions becoming more and more pathological as the story progresses. What begins as an inappropriate feeling, leads to an unprovoked anger so great, that Angela can't even see what's coming - even though her inner "puppet master" seems to know exactly which strings to pull, (No Spoilers!). I was thoroughly fascinated by Alex Samm's ability to connect the reader with the character. Everyone is inclined to the occasional errant feeling when it comes to life and love, but not everyone acts on it. Any person who has ever been wronged has probably imagined a "revenge" scenario; it's just Angela's over-reaction to a seemingly normal stimuli that separates her from the masses. I liked the journal-like format, the background given about Angela's past, although short, helped me to understand her "current" mindset. I also liked the very short chapters and the silence that seemed to fall between them - never knowing how far Angela would go. The only aspects that irked me were structural - grammatical errors and an overabundance of sentence fragments - but they did not take away from my overall reading experience. Recommended to adult readers wishing to delve into a more psychological, delusional, and short-lived romance.

Rating: On the Run (4/5)

*** I received this book from the author (Bostick Communications) in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.