A review by wardenred
Pack of Lies by Charlie Adhara

adventurous emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Mad scientists, buried treasure, a monster in the woods. All that’s missing are a few meddling kids and he’d have quite a story.

I’ve been excited for this book ever since I finished the original series it spins off from. The only reason I kept putting it aside was the hope that the next one would be out soon, because Adhara’s writing is just so bingeable and I wanted a longer stay in this familiar world. Alas, the sequel’s publication date has been getting pushed back, and I had yet another fun convo about *Big Bad Wolf* with friends recently, and, well, I caved.

My impressions, to tell the truth, are… utterly mixed.

I was initially excited to see this was a dual POV book because that’s how I prefer my romance. And when I was reading the original series, I sometimes wished we could get at least a glimpse of, well, everything from Oliver’s POV. But with this book, by the middle or so I was kind of wishing Eli’s POV was the only one. He was really the whole reason I remained invested into the story—not just because he was an already familiar and beloved character, but because he remained thoroughly entertaining, kept gaining depth, and also, from his POV Julien seemed a lot more interesting compared to Julien’s own parts. It’s funny, but maybe if I only saw Julien through Eli’s eyes, I would find it easier to click with him. I would just write off everything I didn’t fully understand about him as, “Well, Eli doesn’t know certain things, so.“

Because the thing about Julien is, initially I was prepared to take his overall opaqueness and the secrets he kept from the reader as a feature, not a bug. He’s an actor, after all, it figures that he can be good at smoke and mirrors in his situation. But the further the story progressed, the more frustrated I was with his scenes, because I just *wasn’t getting to know him*. I still think it was meant to be a feature, but the execution was faulty. And that, naturally, impacted my impression of the romance, because yeah, the dynamic here was theoretically fun and promising… but with one part of the relationship constantly turning into a smoke screen, it was just really hard to get into.

Another disappointment was the mystery itself. It was as exciting as most of the mysteries in the original series in terms of set-up, but the actual investigation kept losing me. I kept wanting someone else to take over. Not even Cooper and Oliver necessarily, though I wouldn’t have said no to that. Just, I don’t know, someone more… competent? More capable of making the process of solving the mystery exciting? More proactive in some ways? I don’t know, I’ll be musing about it for a bit more, I guess.

But! To finish on a few high notes, I really enjoyed every part of the snowy, wintery setting. There was this strong sense of place throughout—I felt like I was actually present in every building or outside location, got affected by the weather, breathed the same air. I enjoyed the banter, especially in the second half of the book, and I definitely loved seeing the leads from the original series again, no matter how briefly. And the overarching plot has enough interesting details that I do still want to pick up the next installment when it’s finally out. 
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