jj131131 's review for:

The Antique Hunter's Death on the Red Sea by C.L. Miller

1.5

lighthearted medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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This low rating is kind of my own fault, because I didn't love the first installment of this series, but wanted to give this one a try anyway since I loved the idea of the cruise ship setting. I still think the setting was a fun thought, but I'm not sure it was used to its full potential - there's not a lot going on that couldn't have happened anywhere else. 

We spend a lot of this book being told how smart and brave and competent Freya is...and then she acts like an idiot, gets herself into dangerous situations without thinking anything through, and waits around for someone else to figure it out and save her. At least in the first book,

Freya gets herself out of the locked vault after being trapped

, but here it's a lot of Freya making bad decisions and Phil/Bella (the undercover FBI agent and undercover art thief) doing the actual work. (Now that I think about it, I would read a series with these two as the leads.) The "villains" are numerous and all start to blend together, and while the idea of a secret society of antique thieves is interesting, the succession plotline gets muddled when there are so many players all with the same motivations and little to use to distinguish among them. 

The ideas in this book are so fun, and I do think there's the backbone of a really good cozy mystery buried in here. Unfortunately, the execution just didn't land for me.