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mothptera's Reviews (40)

The Undetectables

Courtney Smyth

3.0

adventurous funny lighthearted medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

For something advertised as a mystery, I found this one lacking. It wasn't horrible or anything, but it was quite clear who the murderer would end up being if only because of tropes, and while that's not always a terrible thing, having the characters themselves, who are supposed to be intelligent, not catch onto who the murderer was, was frustrating. There's also anti police and anti for profit prisons ideas, two ideas that I am very much in agreement with to be clear, but both things were just mentioned off hand, but mentioned so many times that it felt as if the book should delve deeper into those ideas instead of just stating them over and over again.

While the mystery fell short, I did enjoy the characters and the character interactions, minus the constant 'meme' sort of jokes. I liked the way the relationships between the main three women were portrayed, how growing up causes distance and awkwardness and even more so with a chronic illness. Mallory struggled with feeling left behind by her friends due to her chronic illness and her anxieties leading her to lashing out in ways that I found realistic and understandable.

Although I can't recommend this book as a mystery, I do think the characters and relationships were interesting enough to keep me engaged.

White Trash Warlock

David R. Slayton

2.0

lighthearted fast-paced

Strong character development: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

The book opens with Adam at a bar playing pool, and it showcases that he is able to 'sense' magic, and he's currently trying to find the warlock, who he suspects is his father, who made the pool cue a man he's playing pool against is currently using. I thought this set up things well and made for an intriguing first chapter, unfortunately I do not think the rest of the book was similarly intriguing, which was disappointing as I really wanted to enjoy this book as someone who's originally from Oklahoma.

The actual magic of the world and magical different races are not really explained or gone into in any detail. Adam has the 'sense', meaning he can feel magic and see some magical things as well as crossover into the more magical world, and that's kind of it. Which was fairly disappointing for me because I like the idea of a character who is magically weaker and has to rely more on cunning than raw power.

The characters also lacked depth for me, with Bobby really being the only one who had any sort of character arc. While Bobby's and Adam's relationship was genuinely interesting to me, sadly it wasn't ever really explored deeply. Even something interesting that was revealed,

being that the warlock Adam was looking for could not be his father because Bobby actually killed him when they were kids, was not actually explored. It is just kind of mentioned at the end of the book that Adam was told this information so we don't get to see how this conversation went or how Adam responded to it in the moment.

Annie, Bobby's wife who supposedly everyone wants to save, felt more like a prop than an actual character, which left me caring about whether or not she got saved about as much as Adam did, so not a lot.

Though by far my least favorite part of this book was the romance. While I can admit that I am definitely biased against this romance as Vic is a cop and I do not like cops. I especially do not like cop characters when the book defends cops by talking about them as 'brave protectors', like having Vic's mom say, "That's his job, to serve and protect", or "It is not easy to be a cop these days, it's dangerous". But, even if I ignored the fact that Vic was a cop, he's still an uninteresting, blank page of a character. He never has any conflict with Adam or really reacts to anything, even though he just learned that magic is an actual real thing that exists, he's incredibly chill about the whole thing. Vic is also Mexican and while it didn't feel horribly offensively written or anything, it also didn't feel super well done. The romance is very insta-lovey and the attempt(?) at a love triangle felt wholly unnecessary, though honestly the whole romance felt entirely unnecessary in this book.

Overall the resolution of the plot and the reveal of the big bad felt fairly disappointing and rushed, the characters and world were underdeveloped, and the romance fell flat. Though it was a fairly easy read and didn't feel like too much of a slog to get through, I can't say I'd ever reread or recommend it to a friend.

Voyage of the Damned

Frances White

1.0

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

The first disappointment of this book was the fact that even though it was marked as 'adult', it definitely read like a young adult book, and the characters came off as much younger than they were supposed to be. Ganymedes is not a character that comes off as charming or fun like I think he's supposed to, instead seeming wildly immature and self interested. I did not enjoy having to be stuck in his head, having to read all his 'witty' thoughts, but I continued on because I wanted to get to the mystery.

Once the mystery began I hope to be able to enjoy the book a bit more. While the worldbuilding was simplistic and didn't seem very well thought out, I did my best to ignore it to focus on the mystery. This proved difficult as even after it's confirmed that there are definitely murders happening, everyone is weirdly not that affected by this. Even Ganymedes just goes to his room to eat sadly once someone he has an incredible amount of affection for has been murdered, luckily he is convinced that he needs to start working on solving the murders again. Unfortunately, while I was invested in finding out the who, why, and how of it all, the way the characters were 'investigating' just felt.. bland to me. Ganymedes never really felt like any sort of a detective character, just that he was a guy who was randomly walking around and others would occasionally talk to him and reveal relevant plot info.

Then, at around the 80% mark of the book, the worst twist happened. This twist almost made me decide to stop reading right then because it was just so disappointing and felt like an uninteresting choice to make. I decided to continue because I figured I might as well, and the ending was an equally disappointing,

'the main character learned self worth and is now going to fix the world with their genuine goodness (goodness that I do not feel was actually shown all that much, but rather told)'.

While there are many more things about this book I could single out to criticize, my overall feeling is just one of disappointment.