VENOM by Joan Brady **

I found this barely readable. It's not cohesive, during a meeting with 2 people (him/her) talking about why he and her dad argued then suddenly the author delves into the female's dad going blind, the reasons, theories, then the next paragraph is about London fog, sense of direction, then we FINALLY return to the story of them talking to each other. This crap happens CONTINUALLY. So distracting and brings you out of the immediacy of the story over and over again. There are way too many people involved in way too many conspiracies for my taste. Hard to keep track of them all. Who is good, who is bad, who works for who, hard to figure that out as well. Writer seems to like to keep you confused.

Since the writer is a Brit there are confusing terms to deal with one ex: "All I got to do is put the wind up her a little." WTF is that? Blow her up like a sex doll?

The basic story is absurd, some guy owns bees, their venom cures radiation and lukemia or whatever. That part of the story isn't the meat of the book (I wish). It's mostly about the girl who owns the property of where the bees are (I think) and how companies want the product; espionage, try to kill other people over it, some guy tries to marry her for the patent. It's all pretty ridiculous back and forth with mysterious murders not even delved into. Backgrounds about places you could care less about. Not enough details you WANT to read about. I didn't like it at all. I was confused pretty much MOST of the time. I try to avoid Brit writers they waste my time with stupidity, paragraphs and boring paragraphs of it.

I really would have loved the idea more deeply written about the bees, the venom, the owner. How it works, why it works, why they preferred the beekeeper over other people, a scientific look at its manufacture and the people involved in this work. That would have been more interesting for me. Maybe toss in a few competing companies wanting the product but more more more of the venom. Less of the espionage crap.