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A review by ashley_mrose530
The Undetectables by Courtney Smyth
adventurous
funny
mysterious
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
2.5
I was so disappointed in this book. Everything I saw in the premise of it made me think I was going to love it. Be gay, solve crimes, take naps? A murder mystery? Disability representation? Literally sign me up for all of that. But the result? Just so boring.
I was so upset when I realized that I kept zoning out while listening to this book because it was so boring because I really wanted to love it for all of the reasons above. But the characters were flat, the mystery was predictable (the main one that didn't even end up being the first one we encountered which was kind of upsetting too not gonna lie), and the prose was fairly rudimentary.
Before I get too far into my gripes with this one, I want to say that I did enjoy some parts of the book. I think Theo, the ghost, was probably my favorite character. He had arguably the most personality out of all four of them and managed to make me laugh a few times.
I also really liked the disability rep with the main character having fibromyalgia. Her consistent mention of her pain and fatigue felt believable and realistic from what I've heard about the disease. I also think it was good to keep that reminder on the page rather than trusting the reader to just remember it all the time because I'm sure I would have forgotten since it's not something that I struggle with myself.
But unfortunately, that's where the good ends. I really couldn't be bothered to keep up with the plot of this one once I figured out the killer almost immediately. No one else really made sense at all, but it did confuse me whyhe would pretend to hire them when he could have easily went on with his plans probably without getting caught at all without them. I liked that he explained his crazy mind at the end though it still didn't really make any sense. I was also kind of upset when it skipped ahead by like six years or something after the initial chapter because I wanted to see them find Theo's murderer. They got me kind of invested in that one and then that wasn't even the main murder of the book? I think that was a bad decision because I checked out after that and wasn't very interested in the new murders.
Finally, the three female characters bothered me so much because I could barely tell any of them apart. Specifically their voices, their dialogue, all sounded the same so it was very difficult to tell which one was talking, but also, their personalities seemed to be very interchangeable as well. And since it was written in third person, I couldn't even tell the POV character from the other two half the time. One liked bugs, one had fibromyalgia, and the third.... I don't even know.... dated a lot? I think those were their only defining characteristics but if they weren't talking about those things, then they were the same person to me. It was really frustrating and made my boredom with the book even worse because I didn't care about the characters at all.
In all, a very disappointing read and I don't think I'm even going to try to read the next one to see what happened to Theo.
I was so upset when I realized that I kept zoning out while listening to this book because it was so boring because I really wanted to love it for all of the reasons above. But the characters were flat, the mystery was predictable (the main one that didn't even end up being the first one we encountered which was kind of upsetting too not gonna lie), and the prose was fairly rudimentary.
Before I get too far into my gripes with this one, I want to say that I did enjoy some parts of the book. I think Theo, the ghost, was probably my favorite character. He had arguably the most personality out of all four of them and managed to make me laugh a few times.
I also really liked the disability rep with the main character having fibromyalgia. Her consistent mention of her pain and fatigue felt believable and realistic from what I've heard about the disease. I also think it was good to keep that reminder on the page rather than trusting the reader to just remember it all the time because I'm sure I would have forgotten since it's not something that I struggle with myself.
But unfortunately, that's where the good ends. I really couldn't be bothered to keep up with the plot of this one once I figured out the killer almost immediately. No one else really made sense at all, but it did confuse me why
Finally, the three female characters bothered me so much because I could barely tell any of them apart. Specifically their voices, their dialogue, all sounded the same so it was very difficult to tell which one was talking, but also, their personalities seemed to be very interchangeable as well. And since it was written in third person, I couldn't even tell the POV character from the other two half the time. One liked bugs, one had fibromyalgia, and the third.... I don't even know.... dated a lot? I think those were their only defining characteristics but if they weren't talking about those things, then they were the same person to me. It was really frustrating and made my boredom with the book even worse because I didn't care about the characters at all.
In all, a very disappointing read and I don't think I'm even going to try to read the next one to see what happened to Theo.