Always the First to Die, by R.J. Jacobs

Always the First to Die is an acclaimed new thriller from relative newcomer R.J. Jacobs. It's a pretty good book, but I can't quite join the Author Blurb Exchange Collective this time.

Jacobs knows how to construct a novel, which puts him above a lot of the pack. Where Always the First to Die falters is in its characters, which are one-dimensional. The lead, Lexi, is a librarian, which is rapidly becoming a cliche, but she could have been a circus acrobat for all it served the story.

This novel is a quasi-meta story about a woman who survived catastrophic events during the making of a slasher movie years before. She finds herself back in the same location years later, along with the obligatory Final Girl from the movie, fighting for her life and the life of her daughter.

There are obvious twists, which Stevie Wonder could have seen a mile away, and a whopper of an unconvincing coincidence that had me howling. Worst of all, during the fever pitch of the final chapter, I didn't care one whit whether the characters survive or perish. Not that I thought for a second there would be a tragic ending.

In one passage of the first-person narrative, Lexi states that readers can be hard to please. I don't mean to be so critical, but Always the First to Die had a lot of potential, and I think it needed a stronger editor to coax a better book out of R.J. Jacobs. I liked some elements of the novel, and I will try Jacobs again. He strikes me as a writer still learning his trade, and I hope for better things in the future.

Written by Mark Sieber