The hook:
A woman is convicted of killing her golden boy fiancée, though she claims to have slept through his murder. After serving her time, she contacts true crime aficionado Laurie Moran, requesting to be the next case on Laurie’s show “Under Suspicion.”
My impressions:
Ok so normally if I’m not a huge fan of something, I don’t write a review, because I prefer to spend my energy lifting up things I’ve genuinely loved. I’m making an exception here because I loved the rest of the book series, and I’m hoping if anyone started with this book and is unsure whether to read the series, perhaps they’ll come across this review to assure them, the rest of the series is so much better than this particular book.
So why didn’t I like this one? First off, it was unmemorable. It’s been a couple of weeks now since I binge read the whole series, and this book is the only one where I genuinely do not remember the ending. It bored me so profoundly I had to Google who the killer was to refresh my memory. On top of that, Laurie felt off kilter and out of character, and her father and Alex both felt dramatically less sympathetic than they had in other entries in the series. Had I not accidentally read later books out of order before this one, I would’ve been expecting Alex to turn out to be a killer or at least an abuser based on the weird characterization he gets in this book alone.
Fear not though! These strange character development issues clear up after this book, and the rest of the series is definitely worth a read. Honestly you can probably skip this one and read the rest of the series without missing much. Don’t let this one dud keep you from enjoying what is otherwise a thoroughly satisfying series that will scratch all your grown-up former Nancy Drew fan itches.
Happy reading!
Kat Pollock 