Ann Charles (1) (1971–)

My problems with this book in one sentence:
The MC has very little control over her libido, she is quite stupid, and the plot is very obviously being steered by one small convenience after another.

To be fair, the MC is a pretty believable character. She has a lot of believable flaws but she doesn't really have any redeeming qualities or anything inherently interesting about her. The only positive thing I can say about her is that she loves her kids very much. Which sadly can't be taken for granted I guess.
This might be a me-thing but when I read paranormal or urban fantasy I don't want to follow a normal person being normal. Slice of life is not interesting to me if there isn't anything special or some twist to it.
The writing is fine, but the pacing is very slow, and very little progress towards any kind of resolution is being made for most of the book.
The plot isn't nearly as subtle about the mystery as it seems to believe. With a plot resolution that is truly hard to guess, suspense can keep the tension up even with slow pacing. But that wasn't the case for me. It is not entirely clear who is involved in what or how deep until the end but the one big red herring is very obvious and the clues pointing to the true culprit are hard to overlook too.

I thought about dropping it a few times not because I was annoyed by something but because nothing interesting was going on for a long time. In the end, I prevailed partly due to ✘✘ Sarah ✘✘s review telling of better books later into the series even though she is generally rather critical.

There are a few time jumps that are unnecessarily hard to follow because we are just told the date after the jump so if you don't painstakingly follow the current date at all times, it's not clear sometimes how big the time-jump was. (It is usually just the next day.)… (mais)

On one hand, this book had much better pacing but on the other hand, the overall plot made basically no progress whatsoever.
I already started to have trouble believing how the MC got pulled into yet another mess right after the first one that left her mentally scarred and even somewhat traumatized.
In the first one, I could believe she would involve herself because she had very good reasons to believe her own daughter was in mortal danger.
In this one, I just kept asking, but why tho. Why would you pursue this so doggedly? It's obvious, of course, because the book wouldn't be interesting otherwise. But that just wasn't enough for me.
People rightfully already started to point out how unlikely it is that she is yet again involved in something that big for no apparent reason. Is she Ta'veren or something?
I am torn about reading the next book because the end already teases yet another mystery of a similar magnitude. AGAIN! If the pace of people dying stays the same there will be no one left in that small town in no time.
I don't know why this particular point annoys me so much in this series but it does. Much more so than in most other series I've read.

I still have the same issues with the MC I had with the first one. She as a character is very believable and believably flawed. But she is just not interesting. Like, not at all. She isn't smart, she isn't crafty, she isn't badass or strong. She has no supernatural ability or is in any way special. I guess you could say she is daring and brave to some degree but the overlap with stupidity is way too big to describe it as something positive.
The only thing that somewhat kept my interest was the drawn-out romance. Sadly this was also almost entirely limited to constant lusting after doc.
And the sexy times already started to get rather repetitive as well.

I might try the third one but I am uncertain if I will even finish it.… (mais)