The Hummingbird Dagger

by Cindy Anstey

[Briana @ Pages Unbound]

I may need to stop reading Cindy Anstey books. I enjoyed her debut novel, but I think each of her books has been worse than the one before it, finally leading me to give this, book 5, two stars. (And, weirdly, the Goodreads ratings seem to agree. Normally authors' later books are rated higher than their earlier books, as people who dislike their work stop reading and fans continue, making the ratings higher. The fact that there is a clear downward rating trend with each of Anstey's books makes me feel less alone in my enormous disappointment.)

Basically, I struggled to get through this one, suffering from boredom through most of the plot. For a book that is a about a murder, a mystery, and a romance, very little seems to happen. The pace only picks up at the very end of the novel, where everything is revealed to the reader all at once. There is practically no way to solve the mystery and no way to become invested in the romance. I almost DNF'ed this to put myself out of my misery.