The Skydivers - Chris Bohjalian - ½ star

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AUTHOR: Chris Bohjalian
SERIES: Alibis Collection, #4
GENRE: Short Story
PUBLICATION DATE: June 2, 2025
RATING: 0.5 stars.


In a Nutshell: The fourth story in the Alibis collection. The first chapter is the only one worth reading. Which isn’t a good thing for a story of eleven chapters. No thrills, no major surprises, not much action, not even any alibi. Can be safely skipped.


Plot Preview: (Too bored to write sensible sentences, so bear with the below gibberish.)
Two skydivers – one fatal incident – one key witness – many contradictions.
Two brothers – one dead father – one farm – many arguments.
Both the above tracks come to us in alternating chapters and are interlinked.


This is the fourth standalone story in the 'Alibis’ series, described on Amazon as “stories about lies, truth, and deception. It’s just a matter of what you can get away with.”

In my review for the third story, I declared it “the weakest story of the series so far.” I had to put my foot in my mouth and jinx the next one, didn’t I? 🤦🏻‍♀️


Woohoos:
🥳 Chapter One. Great in terms of descriptions and thrill. The perfect prelude to an investigation.


IDKs:
🤔 The idea of having alternate chapters tagged ‘The Day It Happened’ and ‘The Night Before’ was great. The implementation was dull.


Mehs:
🤨 Everything that followed Chapter One.

🤨 The theme of ‘Alibis’ and ‘what you can get away with’ – MIA.

🤨 Characters – cardboard cutouts.

🤨 Thrills – non-existent except in the first chapter.

🤨 Story development – boring. Heavy reliance on conversations than on any concrete action.

🤨 Pacing – Dragged. Took me forever to complete the 49 pages.

🤨 Suspense – Hah! There’s only one suspect, so hardly any problem figuring out the mystery. Hence…

🤨 Predictability – 100%; Surprises – 0%.

🤨 Epilogue – The worst epilogue in the history of epilogues. A total flop of a deus ex machina combined with an infodump. Sheesh!


Basically, I’d rather go skydiving without a parachute than read a story such as this.

0.5 stars (rounded up to 1 star on Goodreads because it offers me no other choice.)

This standalone story is a part of the ‘Alibis’ collection, and is currently available free to Amazon Prime subscribers.

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