Review "The Travis Club"

Some information

Title: The Travis Club

Author: Mark Louis Rybczyk

Pages: 381

Genre: mystery, detective

Published: June 2013

Publisher: Mark Louis Rybczyk

My scource: the author (thank you!)

My score on Goodreads: 5 stars

Covertext

Taylor Nichols is a young writer who pens obscure historical guidebooks about his hometown, San Antonio, Texas. His books receive little notice until he unearths a 100 year old mystery that the powerful had hoped would never have been uncovered. 

How far will the city's power brokers go to silence Taylor and his band of friend known as The Travis Club? Intrigue and romance bring this mystery alive in a one of a kind city, San Antonio.

My review

Not expecting a book that would be my genre, I was completely surprised when I couldn't put this book down and really wanted to know what would happen next! Normally I read very predictable books (chick lit :p ), but this time I loved the fact that I didn't know how it would all end. This story was really exciting, build up good and provided us with characters you really get to know along the way. Author Mark Louis Rybczyk was able to arouse my interest for a topic I didn't know a thing about. Writing about old buildings and "lost" treasures that need to be preserved for the future, he striked a chord. As I try to preserve old things every day (teaching dead languages), I liked this subject a lot!

While reading this book, I had the feeling I became a member of the Travis Club. A club of men who try to keep "alive" the old buildings with history in town. They are confronted with rich developers who want to buy everything and turn it into modern buildings. Their base of operations is San Antonio and to their dismay developer and rich man Noel Black is buying a lot of buildings with a beautiful history to knock them down for his big profitable projects. This mr. Black turns out to be one of the biggest enemies the Travis Club has ever had. At the same time he will be the one leading them to their biggest discovery ever. A discovery that changes the lives of all our characters.

Talking about the characters... Our main character in "The Travis Club" is young writer Taylor Nichols. It's not like he's one of the most successful writers in town writing books about historical buildings and the local water reservoir, but because of his 10 book deal he's able to be fulltime writer. Taylor is happy with the simple things in life. His big idol is architect Randall Hugley about whom he also wrote a biography. The most important persons in Taylors life are his friends from the Travis Club. None of them is the most successful or is building a big career but they have one more (important) thing in common. They all love history and they all do whatever they can to save it from destroyers.

What I liked most about Taylor is his enthusiasm. The author is able to let this enthusiasm beam over to us, readers. In his big search you feel along with him and you want to help him digging through big dusty books to find what he's after. It's really easy to get excited about the Travis Club projects. One moment I really got carried away and read 3/4 of this book in a few hours. That's always a good sign!

I have to admit that sometimes the long descriptions in the book about water reservoirs and all that kind of stuff got a little boring. Luckily this was only SOMETIMES the case. The rest of the book was great and it deserves some credit! Even if you're not into this genre or subject... just try it out!

Curious about this story? Watch this trailer!