Take a photo of a barcode or cover
alicetheowl 's review for:
The Julius House
by Charlaine Harris
Reading the Aurora Teagarden books, you can see the seed of the writer Charlaine Harris later becomes. But, ultimately, I find them disappointing, and wish there were more elements about what I like in Harris's later mysteries.
About 75% of this book consists of puttering and the passage of time, before the plot actually picks up. The biggest mystery of the book is stumbled across by accident, and the ending is telegraphed a little too strongly. Chances are good that, in a mystery novel, if I know the ending before the protagonist, it's a little too heavy-handed.
There's very little emotional weight in this book. Aurora reacts to things in a way that, rather than evoking sympathy, made me annoyed with her. She reacts too late to some aspects, while in others, her response seems exaggerated and over the top.
I didn't buy Martin as the love of her life in the first place, so I wasn't invested in Aurora's sticking things out when she found out his deep, dark secrets. For a guy whose last wife warns Roe that he'll never tell her anything about himself, he opens up awfully quick, and with very little prompting. Considering the bulk of the above puttering takes place while Roe wrings her hands over being married to a bad man, but she still loves him, I got impatient for a plot to appear pretty quickly.
At this point, I'm reading these books to see the turning point, when Harris stops messing around and shows those writing chops I know she has. This is not the best she can do, but I want to see when she comes to that realization.
About 75% of this book consists of puttering and the passage of time, before the plot actually picks up. The biggest mystery of the book is stumbled across by accident, and the ending is telegraphed a little too strongly. Chances are good that, in a mystery novel, if I know the ending before the protagonist, it's a little too heavy-handed.
There's very little emotional weight in this book. Aurora reacts to things in a way that, rather than evoking sympathy, made me annoyed with her. She reacts too late to some aspects, while in others, her response seems exaggerated and over the top.
I didn't buy Martin as the love of her life in the first place, so I wasn't invested in Aurora's sticking things out when she found out his deep, dark secrets. For a guy whose last wife warns Roe that he'll never tell her anything about himself, he opens up awfully quick, and with very little prompting. Considering the bulk of the above puttering takes place while Roe wrings her hands over being married to a bad man, but she still loves him, I got impatient for a plot to appear pretty quickly.
At this point, I'm reading these books to see the turning point, when Harris stops messing around and shows those writing chops I know she has. This is not the best she can do, but I want to see when she comes to that realization.