The World’s Greatest Detective and Her Just Okay Assistant – Liza Tully

Olivia Blunt is thrilled to be hired as assistant to the nationally renowned investigator Aubrey Merritt. She longs to become a valued contributor to the great detective’s work, but Merritt is a difficult, exacting boss, and the learning curve is steeper than she expected.

After weeks of boring computer work, Olivia is finally invited to join Merritt on an important case. On the night of her sixty-fifth birthday party, Victoria Summersworth somehow fell over her balcony railing to her death on the rocky shore of Vermont’s Lake Champlain. She was a happy woman—rich, beloved, in love, and matriarch of the preeminent Summersworth family. The police ruled her death a suicide, but Victoria’s daughter Haley thinks it was murder.

Merritt and Olivia soon discover that the Summersworth family is complicated web of lies, ambitions, and resentments. As the list of suspects grows, Olivia makes one apparent mistake after another. When she blunders into a truly dangerous situation, she realizes Merritt might be right: she might be in over her head with this whole detective thing…or she might be unravelling a mystery even bigger than the one they started with.

A great concept that fell flat, in my opinion, because it needed to insult a female character. Strong, mature women don’t insult, nor demean other women, and Aubrey needed to insult and put down her new assistant, Olivia.

After several embarrassing moments during the Poirot-esque murderer reveal, Olivia finally stood up to her at the end of the book, and threatened to leave. That’s when Aubrey finally realised she need to pull her head in and acquiesced. She’s old enough to know better, but sometimes older women are too arrogant for their own good and do nothing but piss people off. And I’m speaking from experience here.

Hopefully, things will be better in the second book out later this year, and not as stuffed full of descriptions and scenes as this one is.

I gave it 6/10

Leave the Girls Behind – Jacqueline Bublitz

You can run from your past, but not from the girls left behind.

Nineteen years ago, Ruth-Ann Baker’s childhood friend was murdered by convicted killer Ethan Oswald. Haunted by what happened, Ruth has long been convinced Oswald had other victims. But no one has ever believed her.

After dropping out of college and failing to prove her serial killer theory, Ruth is bartending when she hears that another young girl has gone missing from her home town. With Oswald now deceased, she begins to suspect he had an accomplice. A partner in crime who is still active today.

Crossing the globe from New York to New Zealand, Ruth unlocks parts of herself that she hasn’t dared to revisit, bringing her perilously close to three different women. The deeper she delves, the more she can’t shake the feeling that one of them knows the truth. About her childhood friend. About the missing girl. And, perhaps most dangerously of all, about Ruth herself …

I find the concept/premise of books interesting, hence why I borrow and read them, but sometimes they fall flat.

This one did for me with a weak female lead. While strong in some ways, she was weak in others and I know that as a writer characters need flaws to keep people barracking for them. Americans use rooting, but here in Aus that means having sex, hence the word barracking.

As much as I don’t care for flaws, I understand why, even though I would rather read about kick-ass women, and not women being used, lied to, and abused.

I love Jaqueline’s first book, Before You Knew My Name (my review here), but this one wasn’t as good.

I gave it 6/10.

Love On A Bookshelf – Kiah Thomas

What if a gorgeous, grumpy author dedicated his new bestseller to the stranger who inspired him – and that stranger was you…?

Clarrie Brooks isn’t just having a bad day – her life seems to be falling apart. She’s struggling to keep her beloved grandmother’s bookshop afloat, her boyfriend has just dumped her and now it’s, quite literally, raining inside her run-down apartment.

To top it off, the bookshop loses power for the tenth time this week . . . just as new author Declan Archer walks in to sign stock. Declan advises Clarrie to invest in better lighting. Clarrie suggests to him that he write a better book…

Two years later, Declan’s new book is on its way to becoming a bestselling cult classic – and he’s dedicated it to the bookseller who told him to write a better one. As speculation builds over the identity of the bookseller, Clarrie finds herself thrown into the spotlight. Could it be time to open her heart and draft a brand-new love story?

Nowhere near as good as Ashley Poston’s, A Novel Love Story, I personally found the character a little weak, along with the story.

Clarrie doesn’t stand up to her neighbour, her mother, other people, until the end of the book. She stumbles through life wanting to ignore everything except her gran who’s in the nursing home with dementia, and rarely gets a grip in time to figure out what’s happening.

Characters who constantly ignore, question themselves, or brush everything off annoy me.

I gave this 6/10.

Hidden Pictures – Jason Rekulak

Mallory is delighted to have a new job looking after gorgeous four-year-old, Teddy. She’s been sober for a year and a half and she’s sure her new nannying role in the affluent suburbs will help keep her on the straight and narrow.

That is until Teddy starts to draw disturbing pictures of his imaginary friend, Anya. It is quite clear to Mallory and to Teddy’s parents, even in his crude childlike style, that the woman Teddy is drawing in his pictures is dead.

Teddy’s crayons are confiscated, and his paper locked away. But the drawings somehow keep coming, telling a frightening story of a woman murdered… and they’re getting more sophisticated. But if Teddy isn’t drawing the pictures anymore, who is? And what are they trying to tell Mallory about her new home?

An interesting premise for a story, and comes with black and white “drawings” from Teddy and Anya throughout the book. At first, Teddy seems to be possessed. Then, the house is haunted. Then, the ex-shed/guest cottage is haunted. Then there’s another murder, or two, or three…

Like with so many books, I cannot stand female characters who are so willing to brush off gut feelings. Whether they get hairs standing up on their neck, or a niggly thought in the back of their brain, they brush it off like it’s nothing.

On top of her ignoring things, she’s an ex-addict, and while I understand she’s been sober for 18 months, it doesn’t necessarily work in her favour thanks to what the homeowners are up to.

In the end, she does get her shit together and saves the day, tells her back story along the way so you finally understand what the hell is going on with her life, and gets her future in order.

I gave this book 8/10 for the story only, NOT the weakness of the character.