Reviews

Jon's Downright Ridiculous Shooting Case by A.J. Sherwood

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tregina's review against another edition

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3.0

This was fun and enjoyable, but very predictable, both in terms of the relationship beats and also the mystery.

eesh25's review against another edition

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3.0

3.5 Stars

I really enjoyed this book. I can't give it a higher rating because I had a few issues I couldn't ignore, but none of them took away from how much fun it was, so I'd recommend checking it out.

Also, I feel like I should mention that I saw a few comparisons to JCP's Psycop series. And yeah, there are similarities, but they're surface-level. The tone, characters and focus of the two series are completely different. So I wouldn't worry about it.

Now for the synopsis. The book follows Jon, who's a psychic. He can read people's auras and emotions, tell when they're lying. He works for a private company and often acts as a police consultant. He's put a lot of criminals away, which paints a big target on his back. In comes Donovan, who's big, scary, highly trained, and the best person Jon has ever seen. And they get partnered up to solve crimes.

Jon and Donovan are interested in each other from pretty much the beginning. Their romance is cute and completely free of angst. A lot of the tension in the book actually comes from worry about Jon being targeted so often. That was refreshing.

The "downright ridiculous" shooting case isn't featured as much as I'd have liked. Initially, it was because we were still learning about Jon's abilities and how they worked, and I had no issue with that. But then, toward the end, the book took a break from the case to focus entirely on the romance and that I wasn't a fan of. When it comes to multiple plotlines, I prefer them to be interwoven rather than shifting focus from one to the other. The latter takes me out of the story. Though the case itself was interesting enough.

Coming back to the romance for a second, I liked it for the most part, especially in the beginning, but it was rushed later on. The L-word came out of fucking nowhere, and I wish the author had held off till the second book.

I also found the book to be unnecessarily descriptive of characters (facial features, etc.) in the first third. It didn't happen after that, but it was strange while it lasted. I've read three other books by Sherwood and haven't seen that in any of them. Though this is one of her earlier books, and maybe she was trying something.

Moving on, I really liked both Jon and Donovan. Donovan is just a giant teddy bear, whereas Jon is snarky, smart and compassionate. He's also dealt surprisingly well with his abandonment issues and fear of being a burden—he tends to fry every electronic device he touches. Yeah, that's also something he has to deal with. He's worse with electronics than Dresden.

Overall, this was a good read, and I'm looking forward to the sequel. I'm hoping for more mystery and more development of the romance.

karen_reads's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful lighthearted mysterious relaxing medium-paced

Loveable characters? Yes

4.75

brooke_city's review

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lighthearted

2.5

Low stakes, cozy romance, with occasional detective work sprinkled in. Which, on the surface, isn't that bad. Tho the spicy scene was cringe. Reads like bad fanfic, so very obviously written by someone who hasn't had gay sex.

Also, the minority inclusions were stereotypical in dialog and descriptions. Most glaringly, there are Asians who speak in broken English.

And he's supposed to forgive the chick who shot him bc... she has dissociative identity disorder.

That's the reveal of the case, BTW. Unimaginative. And not good representation. I've read better with DiD rep.

Tbh, I'd have preferred a straight up romance without the cases that made no sense.

I don't think I'll be continuing the series.

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