This is a super interesting novel set during the 2005 hurricane season in the south of the US, specifically New Orleans, Houston and Galveston and follows Corbin Thibodeaux (what a classic Louisiana name!) who is a climatologist (essentially a hurricane expert) and Shay Hoovestahl, his rich ex-girlfriend who is working as a TV reporter and looking for her big break, and she thinks Katrina might be it,
What follows is lots of scary situations throughout three hurricanes where Corbin and Shay get close again, and...oh yeah! there is a random serial killer plot...
I liked the hurricane description and the social commentary the most, and the main characters were fine but the multiple side characters were very one dimensional and the contrived thriller plot was really not needed at all.
Still, gets a solid three stars from me.

I was intrigued by the premise of The Hurricane Lover by Joni Rodgers, billed as a
romantic thriller.

The strength of The Hurricane Lover lies in the setting. Rodgers descriptions of the onset, duration, and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina are raw and affecting, particularly as Shay is caught in the flooding. Events are easily visualised given familiarity with the media coverage of the time. Chapters are headed by snippets from weather forecasts and warnings, press releases and emails from Michael Brown, who was the undersecretary of Emergency Preparedness and Response at the time, adding to the sense of realism as the story unfolds.

Unfortunately I felt the main characters were the weakest element of the story. Neither were particularly likeable, and I thought they were strangely one dimensional. Dr. Corbin Thibodeaux, paleoclimatologist and weather risk expert, is a roguish, though needfully intelligent, drunk, and Shay Hoovestahl, a morning show reporter comes, across as spoilt and selfish. Their relationship is messy and dysfunctional, and there was very little in the way of romance through the story, though plenty of lust.

The plot regarding the serial killer, who uses a website devoted to Hurricane tracking as a cover to lure, murder and rob victims, was unique and interesting. However it was slow to start, and overall I was expecting it to have a more central role in the story.

I did enjoy the Hurricane Lover, it just didn’t quite live up to its potential as either a romance or a thriller.

Okay.. I feel bad about giving this three stars because it was a good book, however. There is far too much going on. The serial killer plot is almost irrelevant. So much so that I forgot that was happening at one stage and felt thrown when it was mentioned again.

I felt like it would have been so much better if they had just focused on the disaster of the hurricanes because they were bad enough and it took away from it a little.

However overall this wasn't a bad book and I enjoyed reading about the hurricane, the disasters they cause and the fact that most people stayed and ignored the fact anyway.

(I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.)

During the record-smashing hurricane season of 2005, a firebrand meteorologist and an ambitious journalist come together to catch a con artist who uses chaos as cover for identity theft and murder. A deadly game of cat and mouse unfolds alongside their stormy love affair, complicated by polarized politics, high-strung Southern families, a full-on media circus, and the worst disaster management goat screw in US history.
As Hurricane Katrina howls toward the ill-prepared city of New Orleans, Dr. Corbin Thibodeaux, a Gulf Coast climatologist and storm risk specialist, preaches the gospel of evacuation, weighed down by the fresh public memory of a spectacularly false alarm a year earlier. Meanwhile, Shay Hoovestahl, a puff piece reporter for the local news, stumbles on the story of a con artist who uses storm-related chaos as cover for identity theft and murder. Laying a trap to expose the killer, Shay drags Corbin into her agenda, which goes horribly awry as the city's infrastructure crumbles.

*3.5 stars*

There was a lot to like about this story. Most of us love a good 'disaster' story and this one is right up there with the best of them. Excellent characters - especially Shay Hoovestahl - that bring the horrors of surviving through two mega-storms to life. There are moments when the lives of Corbin and Shay are intertwined and the descriptions of what happens around them are quite graphic. A really strong part of the novel.

Also thrown into this story is the plot of Shay and the story she is uncovering. While it could have been a really good story on its own, it seemed to detract somewhat from the overall telling of this disaster novel. There was one moment, about halfway through, that I actually forgot there was a killer on the loose and it took me a few moments to remember what was happening.

I would really have liked a stronger ending. It was like once Corbin and Shay get out of N.O., the novel stops and there is just a weak ending just to wrap up some plot arc that I must have missed while reading.

Worth a read but it can be just a little frustrating.


Paul
ARH