Author: Vicki Stiefel
Series: Tally Whyte #3
Genre: Mystery, Thriller
Narrator (from AnyPlay): Stephanie Brush
Playtime: 9 hrs 28m
Publisher: Books in Motion
First published 2006
Book Description (from GoodReads): Tally Whyte has seen a lot of dead bodies in her years with the Massachusetts Grief Assistance Program, but this is the first time a murder victim has been brought there by the murderer himself. During the night, someone broke into the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, aka the Grief Shop, and left behind a tragic calling card - the body of a young girl, bearing a message that reads: Sins of the Fathers. The girl s playmate is also missing. Could she be another victim? Or can Tally still save her before the killer strikes again? As the mysteries multiply and Tally s life is threatened, she scrambles to prevent yet another child from falling prey to a madman s warped sense of justice.
Review:
So again a book was picked while I was doing something else, so I didn't realize this was part of a series. In my defense, it can be read on its own. The same character is followed Tally, but other than the fact that she is alive, so that's a direct spoiler of the previous books. Other than that it makes very small references to the previous stories, so is good to go.
As a whole, if this was a representation of the series and the author's writing style then it's not for me. I will not continue with the series. This is a DNF. I did get through to the end of the book because I needed to know who did it.
Generally, I can stand a little bit of character drama, it's part of the build-up of most stories- but the continued piling of drama thrown into the main character distracted me from the point of the book. Her reckless attitude about running into situations where she just barely manages to escape got downright irritating! She'd rush off without waiting for a police escort or a friend and get trapped by the bad guy, over and over again! I do not need to spoil specific situations but let's just say that half the problems could have been avoided if Tally used a drop of common sense.
I think we need to get the memo to the authors, we do not need the main character to be this useless! If your plotline needs the main character to lack common sense, self-preservation skills and needs to be the dumbest person in the whole thing in order to move along, maybe its time to change the style or just give up the series already.
The romance was also very lame, I hate the love triangle attempt, even worse than her stupid attitude on the mystery. The worst part was that the mystery itself, the bodies showing up, the possible culprits, the whole mystery murder aspect was so good that I could not put this book down even if everything else was getting in my nerves. It had such good potential and then the execution was the worst.
The author needs help to get her ideas straight and then find a way to make better pacing or maybe what could have happened is that this style is not for me. Also if this was part of a series, it should be classified as a novella, it did not seem to impact any overall plotline, it was more like an added book to just get more juice from the characters. So if you are reading the whole series, you are safe to skip this one and hope the next one is not another pointless filler.
The narrator was ok, but the voices were all pretty similar, something to be aware of while jumping into it. Might be better to go for a ebook or physical format
Comments