I'd planned on coming on and commenting like crazy but right now my brain is on pre-caffeine withdrawal headache pain and my attention is oddly scattered for someone who has been awake for all of an hour at this point, at most. Hopefully my brain will quiet down and the caffeine will hit soon. Until then, I'm going to try and focus my thoughts on mini reviews here since I gather Goodreads is included in the Amazon boycott.
First up, my most recent read:
The newest BSC graphic novel, Mallory and the Trouble With Twins. It's cute as hell and while I'm not 100% in love with all the art at all times, it works for the most part. Due to hormone craziness I actually kinda teared up at some points because I do love me some Jessi/Mal friendship. I did wonder though, about a couple of things.
1) Why is Mal getting a haircut such a big deal? Her hair is literally longer than all of her siblings and Vanessa has short hair (and also somehow looks older than Mal in the shot of her reading). I'm assuming this is meant to be because it's not the cut but a ~style~ but as is, in a visual medium where you see everyone else in the family has more than a passing acquaintance with hair sheers, it's weird as fuck.
2) How did kid!me not understand piglatin? Did the original book explain it differently or is it just kid!me was dumb as hell? :P
3) Mal is never beating those lesbian rumors when this is her first official
Introducing Mallory Pike look:
Annnnnnnnnnnnd I'm not sure how to feel about them not really updating the piercing pagoda type trip to the mall for piercings for the girls. On the one hand, I do not want to wade through any think pieces on this in the future because by now the general consensus is you get your kid's ears pierced from a professional in a better setting than the mall. On the other hand, there is something stupidly nostalgic about going to the mall to get one's ears pierced. I don't really remember where they got their ears done originally, other than it was at the mall, as kid!me just imagined it was basically Claire's.
Hemlock House is the follow up to Liar's Beach and is one I enjoyed both more and less than the first book in the series. Less because prior to the events of LB, Linden (our main character) and his gf at the time, Greer, are involved in a ~mysterious~ accident that clearly fucked Linden up physically (he's still recovering throughout the entirety of LB and it is a plot point since he's on athletic scholarship to his prep school) and that we don't have resolved by the end of LB. In Hemlock House, Linden and Greer are both at Harvard and in the process of maybe-definitely rekindling their romance. Which is weird because my brain had Linden and Holiday, his childhood BFF and obvious match already paired up. Apparently not though, given that HH goes out of its way to make it obvious that Linden is oblivious as hell to how Holiday feels, as well as his own emotions.
There isn't a ton of callback to LB, so you won't be spoiled if you read them out of order, which is always a bonus. I'm torn on this one though because I'm not sure if this is how other people read it of if it's a me issue, so there's your warning.
A big chunk of the book involves Linden wanting to get back together with Greer, but despite showing up on page a fair amount, I never gave a shit about her. Part of it was because I was already rooting for Holiday to come and claim her idiot and part of it was because Greer felt like she was still not really into Linden... or much of anything. She felt very cardboard cut out, moved from scene to scene but without much to interest me at all. The ONLY time I felt much at all for her was her calling out Linden saying it'd be a real dick move to chase her all semester, only to break up with her right before finals. Which, y'know, fair.
That said
( Spoilers. Obviously. )I did get two random flashbacks to the Evil Twin, when Linden sees Greer and her suitemates embracing and thinks to himself that they look like a statue. Which is what Margo thinks when she spies on the three Wakefield kids after the night on the pier when she killed James. It's weird they did this twice, btw, but this is also the same book that never missed an opportunity to mention how glossy Greer's hair was.
And finally we come to the one I'm either gonna rant about for awhile or just say eh. Not sure which.
Lemon Curd Killer by Laura Childs. This is book 25 in the Charleston/Indigo Tea Shop Mystery series and it's not the worst by far. It's also not one that would have brought me back to reading the series had I started here, instead of joining Mom in mystified misery while reading
Murder in the Tea Leaves.
I have a love/hate relationship with the teashop mysteries. On the one hand, I enjoy the idea of the shop (and this is from someone who doesn't like tea) and I enjoy certain characters (Hayley and Drayton in particular) a great deal. I enjoy the
idea of seeing Charleston on page, but more often than not there are just so many things wrong with the little details that I can easily get derailed. I do sometimes wonder how much worse/better it would be if I were from the Historic District. Would more if it hit, would more of it be "oh, honey, no, that's not how it works at all!"? We'll never know, I suppose. Maybe I should see if Jess reads cozy mysteries, and if so if she's read these and has thoughts. *muse* Anyway, for the most part, if I'm in just the right mood or the book hits in the right way, these are popcorn books for me. They require very little thinking, let me vent for a bit if needed, and I usually walk away with a desire to do something crafty or want to hit the kitchen and make something.
Anyway, LCK has the initial murder take place on Johns Island, but not once during the entire book does the absolute clusterfuck of a traffic jam that plagues Johns Island come up. Not once, not even in passing when discussing how much the place has changed over the course of Theo's lifetime. (This discussion doesn't happen but it could've fit right in.) In fact, I would bet good money that this is actually based more on how John's Island USED to be, and it's a trip and a half for me to remember how rural and laidback it was compared to the nightmare that is now. Anyway. I mostly allowed this to slide, other than Theo popping over to Johns Island in the afternoon when the traffic creep would've likely already started, if only because of the schools letting out and all the parents having to scurry home to be with said kids. The reason I harp on this, besides liking to gripe, is because the traffic is so legendary that for years they've been trying to expand 526 and every year everyone says "fuck it, I'll take sitting in traffic for literally 3 hours to the fuckery this would do to the area." Like the politicians onboard with it were practically crying when the last round failed. There were news articles for WEEKS about it. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if recent transplants to the area only know one thing about Johns Island and that's the freakin' traffic.
But this book jaunts over there like it's no big thing. I will allow that there's really only the one time where I'd expect the traffic to be bad-bad so instead I'll ask, what kind of absolute idiot decides to drag their 60-something employee/friend with them to corner someone they fully believe is involved in a drug deal that went wrong and resulted in murder, at a deserted house in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere? Because Theo does this. They plan it, even. And it's given half a second of "maybe this wasn't brilliant" but not really for the reasons anyone sane would think. It's 9pm and you're thinking NOW is the time to corner someone and ask a rando question that could very well make them realize you're onto them? The last person who literally stumbled into this was shot in the back of the head, Theo. Wtf.
Which is another issue. Nadine, our first victim, is our first POV character who is killed in the first chapter, or maybe the prologue. And fairly early on in the investigation, the police realize it's likely due to the cocaine traces found in the next room. Nadine stumbled in (of all the bad luck), saw something she shouldn't have, and got shot as she tried to get away. We as the readers realize this. The cops realize this. Theo realizes this at some point and then keeps forgetting as she tries to figure out whodunnit by virtue of who hated Nadine enough to kill her.
Ma'am! It wasn't about hate, it was about who was in on the drug deal, dammit! Stop trying to bring in pieces of another puzzle! *headdesk*
I was disappointed in the killer, but honestly relatively happy that it wasn't the picked on for no reason ex-boyfriend. Again, for as gracious and warm as Theo is meant to be, she is painfully judgemental and rivals Delaine in her snobbishness. At least Delaine is upfront about it, so you know it's there.
This isn't a book where Theo solves the mystery before bungling into the answer, btw. This also isn't a good look for Riley and Theo as a couple as once more I am reminded this author can't write romance to save her life. Which is... fine, I guess, but maybe don't have Riley talk over Theo as she's running through a BnB chasing a killer. Just have him realize hey, I should STFU and listen to whatever Theo's trying to say. Since I was in the middle of three books (two Theos, one of them on audio) I'm a little iffy on whether he just pulls this trick more than once across multiple books or if this book had him being particularly dense. Either way, Riley, do better. Also, Theo, use your voice and your words. Tell him to shut it, there's a killer for real, send help.
This is also the book where I realized something in the writing style has changed. I'm not sure if it's just my perception of it, or if things have gotten choppier, but it's really apparent when we get what has become the Chapter 2/Perfect size 6 moment of the book for Theo/Riley.
Pete Riley was, as always, an oasis of calm. Even in a maelstrom of shock and uncertainty. He arrived some twenty minutes later and swept Theodosia into his arms.
"Thank you for coming," Theodosia said. She could feel his newly acquired Glock 22 press up against her as she hugged him tight. It made her feel... safe.
--snip--
Theodosia tended to call him Riley instead of Pete, and he called her Theo. It was what worked for them. And had for a couple of years now.I included the first bit so you can FEEL the romance. The part after the snip is how he's been introduced for the past 4 books I've read and it's always this choppy. The audiobook really drives this home and I do not understand why no one's made this flow a little better. The Theo thing is also just dumb as hell since he's not the only person to call her Theo, but I probably wouldn't notice if I weren't being handed these sentence fragments and being given the impression I am meant to swoon at this love for the ages.
And again, if this simply only came into play for this, I'd grumble a bit but that'd be fine adjacent, but this happens throughout the book. I think it's meant to keep things sounding more realistic and closer to how people do actually talk and think, and it could/did work in smaller doses in earlier books, but now it's just making me long for an editor to fix things.
In general, Theo's got the kind of deathwish that often accompanies an amateur sleuth, in that she frequently receives death threats, often on her actual front door at home, and instead of realizing that maybe handing them over to the cops (who aren't really shown to be incompetent in this series) might help find the killer faster, she just decides she'll be fine because she's got a guard dog. This time the threat comes from an email and despite Theo never being shown to be a serious tech wizard, she decides that rather than share this with the cops, she'll just try and look into it on her own. Of all the pieces of the puzzle not to share... at least the stuff tacked to your door is likely to be done with gloves. The email with an attachment/video threat has multiple chances of tracking down the sender, dammit.
I will grant her this: when Dalmatians are barking at you, they are fucking terrifying. I've never really encountered whatever mix of Dalmatian and... whatever, Earl Grey is, but I imagine the teeth are still scary as hell.
One of the weird joys of reading these out of order and back to back, is seeing how there is thought given to setting up the subsequent books. I'm working on
A Dark and Stormy Tea in audio and in it, Delaine (Nadine's sister) mentions that Nadine is working on a new clothing line, we're introduced to the art gallery that's going to play a role in
Honey Drop Dead, and there's a mention of shipwrecks off the Charleston coast, which factors into the mystery for the supremely fucking stupid
Murder in the Tea Leaves.
Also, we're definitely in the part of the series where you wonder who in their right mind is hiring the Indigo Tea Shop to cater anything since it always ends in murder or an attack.
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