Reviewed by Silvara on
I received this book for free from Berkley Prime Crime in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
This sounded like it was going to be a fairly interesting mystery. I liked the synopsis, and the first pages caught my attention. Unfortunately it started to irk me shortly after that. Almost every single character is introduced like this:
"friend Lisa", "newcomer Nancy", "Rottweiler Carl", "boyfriend Pete", "waitress so-and-so" ... And some of them were introduced that way multiple times in the book. As though the author was aware we might not remember who the character was because they didn't have much personality. The very central characters had enough personality and quirks that you remember who they are, but there are so many characters in the book that a lot of the secondary and periphery characters just don't.
In a number of places, it would have been less irksome had there been even just one more word added before the 'title' of the character. Like "here comes so-and-so and her boyfriend Pete." But most of the time it just felt stilted.
It was also unbelievable how Kelly found most of the clues. She would only go to one or two places in the town, and suddenly women would turn up and start gossiping and the clues would fall into her lap.
I did like how much of the lives of the characters we get to see. We see very little of the town itself, but the central characters have all kinds of drama to make up for it. We get to learn all about school, sports, family get togethers, lots of talk about knitting, and of course the drama around the accident itself.
The mystery didn't actually start until about 1/3 of the way in. Which didn't bother me, but it might be slow for those who like their mysteries to start right in.
Recipes Included: Llama Headband (knitting pattern), Cranberry Orange Nut Bread.
This review was originally posted on Fantasy of the Silver Dragon
Reading updates
- Started reading
- 21 June, 2016: Finished reading
- 21 June, 2016: Reviewed