Believable or Not So Believable Moments

Use this forum to discuss the December 2019 Book of the month, "E-M-P Honeymoon", by Dorothy May Mercer
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Hannalore
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Re: Believable or Not So Believable Moments

Post by Hannalore »

Everydayadventure15 wrote: 10 Dec 2019, 10:57 My take on this book was that it’s more of a mockery of a real event that could happen, but probably won’t (think funny movie like McHale’s navy or Paul Blart Mall cop). The incompetent bad guys and everything working out for the good guys made for a light-hearted comedic thriller for me.
I agree with you on this. The book doesn't sounds fictious and no actions are convincing enough.
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Erin Dydek
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Post by Erin Dydek »

Hannalore wrote: 22 Jan 2020, 12:39
Everydayadventure15 wrote: 10 Dec 2019, 10:57 My take on this book was that it’s more of a mockery of a real event that could happen, but probably won’t (think funny movie like McHale’s navy or Paul Blart Mall cop). The incompetent bad guys and everything working out for the good guys made for a light-hearted comedic thriller for me.
I agree with you on this. The book doesn't sounds fictious and no actions are convincing enough.
I think it still makes for an enjoyable read but probably doesn't appeal to people looking for a serious thriller that comes across as more realistic.
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Post by silvafaerie »

Helene_2008 wrote: 10 Dec 2019, 10:48 I agree that they were several things about the terrorists I found unbelievable. When Steve is talking to Rhee Su-jin at breakfast and she messes up her cover by not begging about to answer his questions correctly about where she lived in California. She's supposed to be highly trained and best of the best! Then when Dear Leader forgot/ didn't know which coast NYC and Washington DC were on. How could you plot a terrorist attack and not be familiar with the country's geography.
I agree with you. Strangely though, this is one of the better parts of the book, in my opinion. I liked the chemistry between Steve and Su-jin. In a different story I could see Su-jin sabotaging the plan herself and becoming the hero of the book. This would include a lot of self-conflict and a romance with Steve, of course. :D
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Post by silvafaerie »

Juliana_Isabella wrote: 09 Jan 2020, 18:04
Reynaa wrote: 10 Dec 2019, 13:08 This is a good topic for this book.

One main thing that stood out to me as not being believable is the CIA and government in general allowing a regular cop and his wife have anything to do with the investigation.
I definitely agree. The cop is already hardly believable, but including his wife pushed it over the edge for me. There's no way that someone untrained (with no security clearance) would be allowed to participate when terrorists are involved.
Yes! And why did Steve not call in backup? For such a serious threat it seemed strange that he would not want to immediately tell his supervisors about what is going on. You would think that he would want help from his CIA buddies.
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Post by silvafaerie »

Oliver_books wrote: 17 Jan 2020, 07:18 There were several moments when I was seriously questioning how realistic some actions were. The most inconsistent one was definitely Kelly and Tom being in any way involved in this international investigation since they had no credentials to do so. Kelly was literally just a civilian and Tom, a policeman out of his jurisdiction.
Not to mention the times that Kelly was involved she was super uncomfortable. She was pushed into doing things she didn't feel like she could do, such as break into the computer lab. I didn't know that majoring in computer science now equals being a hacker. Where does Tom get that idea? And, isn't Tom the one who hacked into the rental agency to find out about the cars?
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Post by Adina Lutinger »

I think that most of the book wasn't believable. The examples that accur to me right now are the way they trapped Steve - a CIA agent - so effortlessly, and the way Steve made Sue jin - a trained spy who is appriciated highly at the terror organization - to blow up her cover so easily. Everything was just too easy. But I think that this is also a good thing for this book, because I feel that this book is meant to be a light and fun read and not a realistic thriller.
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Post by Cwaganagwa Dorothy »

A believable moment includes Kelly smartly slipping away from the bad guys and unbelievable moments include the issue about the solar flares that might have hit our planet, Kelly's silence about her ideal and the effects of an Electro-Magnetic Pulse.
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Post by Twylla »

The idea of a small group of American civilians, led by a handsome CIA agent, breaking up a terrorist plot is a huge stretch of the imagination. Realistically, I don’t think the individuals involved could have pulled it off. It would require that multiple government agencies cooperate and share information and that top-secret classified information is shared with civilians who don't have a security clearance. When Kelly and Steve were trying to log into the bank of computers and copy data, it was just too easy. We need to give the terrorists some credit for having better security than that. But if you let yourself go with the flow of the story, it is very exciting and entertaining!
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Post by YoshaP »

I absolutely agree with you! I was pretty disappointed with the female characters in the book, to be honest. Kelly came off as excessively paranoid for no particular reason. Additionally, I do not believe that clicking "forgot password", when you do not know if it will send an email or a phone notification to the terrorists, was tech-savvy in any way, shape or form. Them finding the phone afterwards and not before this action seemed laughable to me and was the low point of the book for me. All the characters involved in the Senator's team seemed extremely unprofessional to me, given the seriousness of the purported threat. The apparent difficulty that Sue-Jin has at keeping herself together in the field after years of training was another sore point for me.
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Post by tsh1001 »

Agree, it is not likely that the US government would leave the fate of a terror investigation to ONE CIA agent, two ex-military body guards, a cop, and a computer science graduate. Especially when there are power grids & nuclear missiles involved.
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Post by readerrihana »

It was fiction so unbelievable from the start, and all these terrorist threats stories are there to keep people in suspense and like a kick of things I think
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Post by a-b-c- »

Well, I don't think they would have let Sky take over or that he was ready to go into space at the drop of a hat.
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Post by readerrihana »

Sometimes reading things that are unbelievable is what keeps us interested I guess
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Post by tristenb »

I honestly didn't finish reading this book for this very reason. I was having difficulty finding the situations to be realistic and the characters reactions to be rather odd. Nothing made sense to me.
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Post by Jajachris »

A lot of things just didn't make any sense to me while reading the book but then I considered it a twist, a way of projecting security and intelligence to be always in control of 'terrorists' plots
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