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3.78 AVERAGE
3.78 AVERAGE
For once with Harris mysteries, I didn't guess the "ultimate" killer half way through. A good read for when you're bored, but hardly anything mind boggling.
This was one of those books that I could see was flawed but enjoyed reading anyway. I didn't know it was the fourth in a series, I imagined it was the first and I am not sure whether or not I would feel differently about it if I had read the other three.
It starts quite intriguingly introducing Harper and showing her at her work with her "super-power". The fact it came mysteriously from a lightening strike is fair enough, I mean it is not meant to be believable and it seems a pretty balanced sort of a power adding fuel for the plot but not making things too easy (she can sense a bit from dead bodies is all).
From there the plot pans out to show Harper's family and background. I (thinking this was the first book in the series) thought it was really well done with no over-explanation and you have to piece it together gradually, but apparently most readers would have known some of it from the previous books...so then I am not so sure any more.
The plot itself is a bit hard to suspend disbelief enough to go along with, another reviewer has pointed out how incredibly unprofessional one of the police officer's behaviour is (with fatal results) and I have to say I tired of the aggressive heterosexuality of the world view. Harper seems to feel the need to tell us she had sex with Tolliver, with just too much information (but not enough to satisfy erotica fans) every chapter, she also has various amounts of sexual tension with other male characters and jealously checks out women around Tolliver. There is a lot of that sort of stuff as if males and females can't relate except on the basis of potential sex. It's done fairly cleanly though so I just ignored it and focused on the plot.
I liked that Harper comes from such a dysfunctional background and hates it and has emotional baggage from it, but acknowledges that a lot of children have less than ideal childhoods (about time we started being honest about this as a society). There's a bit of a tendency to extreme black-and-white condemnation of parents who take drugs in the way the parents are portrayed...but within the book it works pretty well. The children are portrayed as very capable at adapting and doing whatever needs to be done. I liked that there are apparently at least two separate plots, but they weave together in the end and there are twists. I like the difficulty of Harper and Tolliver's relationship with their aunt and uncle too.
I wasn't completely convinced by aspects of the answer to the "mystery" and I didn't feel like all aspects of the case were built well. The question about who threw the rattle-snake at the old man is simply ignored for most of the book for example so it is a real anticlimax when it is solved.
This book made a couple of days a bit less sucky when I had the flu. It's one of those books you can pick up fairly easily and read it and it managed not to grate on me too much. Pretty much on a par with Sookie Stackhouse novels which I also tend to enjoy despite myself.
It starts quite intriguingly introducing Harper and showing her at her work with her "super-power". The fact it came mysteriously from a lightening strike is fair enough, I mean it is not meant to be believable and it seems a pretty balanced sort of a power adding fuel for the plot but not making things too easy (she can sense a bit from dead bodies is all).
From there the plot pans out to show Harper's family and background. I (thinking this was the first book in the series) thought it was really well done with no over-explanation and you have to piece it together gradually, but apparently most readers would have known some of it from the previous books...so then I am not so sure any more.
The plot itself is a bit hard to suspend disbelief enough to go along with, another reviewer has pointed out how incredibly unprofessional one of the police officer's behaviour is (with fatal results) and I have to say I tired of the aggressive heterosexuality of the world view. Harper seems to feel the need to tell us she had sex with Tolliver, with just too much information (but not enough to satisfy erotica fans) every chapter, she also has various amounts of sexual tension with other male characters and jealously checks out women around Tolliver. There is a lot of that sort of stuff as if males and females can't relate except on the basis of potential sex. It's done fairly cleanly though so I just ignored it and focused on the plot.
I liked that Harper comes from such a dysfunctional background and hates it and has emotional baggage from it, but acknowledges that a lot of children have less than ideal childhoods (about time we started being honest about this as a society). There's a bit of a tendency to extreme black-and-white condemnation of parents who take drugs in the way the parents are portrayed...but within the book it works pretty well. The children are portrayed as very capable at adapting and doing whatever needs to be done. I liked that there are apparently at least two separate plots, but they weave together in the end and there are twists. I like the difficulty of Harper and Tolliver's relationship with their aunt and uncle too.
I wasn't completely convinced by aspects of the answer to the "mystery" and I didn't feel like all aspects of the case were built well. The question about who threw the rattle-snake at the old man is simply ignored for most of the book for example so it is a real anticlimax when it is solved.
This book made a couple of days a bit less sucky when I had the flu. It's one of those books you can pick up fairly easily and read it and it managed not to grate on me too much. Pretty much on a par with Sookie Stackhouse novels which I also tend to enjoy despite myself.
This fourth book in the Harper Connelly series was my least favorite. I was not bothered by Harper and Tolliver’s relationship, it made sense in a weird way, but in this book it became real drag to the story. Poorly written sex scenes, an endless stream of telling people they were siblings AND lovers, then being disgruntled when people didn’t react well, it all got real tiring. On top of that, the wrap up was lame. “Of course we would be happy to walk into your obvious trap! Well thank goodness you feel like chatting once you have us at gunpoint. Why don’t you just kill yourselves so we can move on to the next part of the story. Thank you for your cooperation.” Still, I loved the character of Manfred so I am going to give the Midnight series a shot.
Thank goodness this is the last book in this series because Harper's relationship with her stepbrother was creeping me out. I know they're not blood relatives, but I just don't think it's a good idea to get it on with your stepbrother.
Call me crazy.
Call me crazy.
This is the best one in the series. It could possibly be the last.
I've given the books in this series a generous 3 stars, because they're not TERRIBLE. What they are is very, very average. I could SEE what it wanted to be, but I just didn't FEEL it.
I like the odd easy read, and in fact I liked the Sookie books by the same author, however I found myself really not enjoying the Harper Connelly series, and ended up skimming heavily. I was more willing to overlook the weak writing in the Sookie series because I found the plot and the minor characters compelling (though to be fair I read those as a teenager so who knows what I would think of them now). When Harris turns her pen to crime/mystery however, it falls flat.
I found the cases incredibly weak. The mystery unfolds painfully slowly, and not in a good way, just in a boring way. Meanwhile, you're getting the details of every shower, meal and aimless train of thought Harper has, none of which are interesting. (I'd also like to point out that Harris has a habit of writing young women with the disposition of self-assured, middle-aged housewives. They never actually feel YOUNG.) This goes on for about 280-290 pages, until Harris crams in the convenient info-dump of a conclusion into the last few pages. And the murderer is almost always the exact person Harper had a "bad feeling" about. This last book is the only one whose resolution actually surprised me (Mark, not Chip and Drex who were predictable AF), but again, Harris' writing does not do the moment justice. When Mark was revealed as Cameron's killer, my reaction was "huh. kay." Because Harper's narration is so generic it just doesn't evoke any emotion in me - except for maybe irritation.
And as for Harper herself I found her to be terribly dull, but at the same time rather erratic, self-pitying and huffy. Not to mention grossly co-dependant. Having a ~complicated past~ is fine and all, but as I've noticed with all Harris' work, the exposition is always inserted in the way of clunky flashbacks. And since the descriptions are so unemotional, it doesn't serve to add depth to Harper's character. It just feels like waffling.
These books give me the distinct impression of a first draft - like she's just written down what's come to mind without any refinement. Or maybe, it's just not my style. I'm not a fan of stream of consciousness or rambling - which is easy to fall into when writing in the first person. When it comes to words, less is more in terms of impact. I don't need to know everything the character is thinking, and particularly in a crime novel, you have to think about pace. Cut the fat! The plot should be sturdy enough to fill it out. However it seems neither the plot or the protagonist are strong enough to carry this series.
Also, when she fucked her brother and started calling him "baby" while still forgetting not to call him "brother," I had to resist the impulse to douse the book in gasoline and sacrifice it to Satan. That's... not hot.
I like the odd easy read, and in fact I liked the Sookie books by the same author, however I found myself really not enjoying the Harper Connelly series, and ended up skimming heavily. I was more willing to overlook the weak writing in the Sookie series because I found the plot and the minor characters compelling (though to be fair I read those as a teenager so who knows what I would think of them now). When Harris turns her pen to crime/mystery however, it falls flat.
I found the cases incredibly weak. The mystery unfolds painfully slowly, and not in a good way, just in a boring way. Meanwhile, you're getting the details of every shower, meal and aimless train of thought Harper has, none of which are interesting. (I'd also like to point out that Harris has a habit of writing young women with the disposition of self-assured, middle-aged housewives. They never actually feel YOUNG.) This goes on for about 280-290 pages, until Harris crams in the convenient info-dump of a conclusion into the last few pages. And the murderer is almost always the exact person Harper had a "bad feeling" about. This last book is the only one whose resolution actually surprised me (Mark, not Chip and Drex who were predictable AF), but again, Harris' writing does not do the moment justice. When Mark was revealed as Cameron's killer, my reaction was "huh. kay." Because Harper's narration is so generic it just doesn't evoke any emotion in me - except for maybe irritation.
And as for Harper herself I found her to be terribly dull, but at the same time rather erratic, self-pitying and huffy. Not to mention grossly co-dependant. Having a ~complicated past~ is fine and all, but as I've noticed with all Harris' work, the exposition is always inserted in the way of clunky flashbacks. And since the descriptions are so unemotional, it doesn't serve to add depth to Harper's character. It just feels like waffling.
These books give me the distinct impression of a first draft - like she's just written down what's come to mind without any refinement. Or maybe, it's just not my style. I'm not a fan of stream of consciousness or rambling - which is easy to fall into when writing in the first person. When it comes to words, less is more in terms of impact. I don't need to know everything the character is thinking, and particularly in a crime novel, you have to think about pace. Cut the fat! The plot should be sturdy enough to fill it out. However it seems neither the plot or the protagonist are strong enough to carry this series.
Also, when she fucked her brother and started calling him "baby" while still forgetting not to call him "brother," I had to resist the impulse to douse the book in gasoline and sacrifice it to Satan. That's... not hot.
At age 15, Harper Connelly was struck by lightning. She survived, but it left her with a bad leg--and the ability to sense the dead. Since then, she and her step-brother Tolliver have traveled the country, solving murders and finding bodies. The closely observed details of their odd life and relationship are the strongest part of the series. Harper and Tolliver are each other's best friends and (as of the third book in the series) lovers. Harris neither ignores nor glamorizes their codependence. Over the years they've worked out systems to keep them sane and healthy (crates of secondhand books in the trunk, daily runs, which chain restaurants are the cheapest and healthiest), but if separated, each is at a loss. And although they just want to make a living, Harper has a strong sense of morality to go with her supernatural power, and so she keeps getting sucked into solving the murders she discovers. The mysteries themselves are always interesting, but also sordid and grim.
This is the fourth book in the series, and it mostly deals with Harper and Tolliver's twisted family. This book made me realize that Harris is a much more skillful writer than I realized; she'd laid hints throughout the series, and one extra clue is all it takes to make them go off like a chain reaction. Finally, Harper recieves answers--some to questions she didn't even realize she needed to ask.
This is the fourth book in the series, and it mostly deals with Harper and Tolliver's twisted family. This book made me realize that Harris is a much more skillful writer than I realized; she'd laid hints throughout the series, and one extra clue is all it takes to make them go off like a chain reaction. Finally, Harper recieves answers--some to questions she didn't even realize she needed to ask.
I thought this was a nice conclusion to the series. Learned more about her family and she got some closure to issues. I liked how her independence was addressed with the family context. Good series!
Like other Charlene Harris books I really enjoyed this one. I like the mystery of it and I always try to figure out what happened before the end. I really hope she writes another Harper book.