SBD: beach reading

I didn’t read as much as I anticipated, even as I sat on the beach.  There were dolphins to watch for and waves to splash about in.  Not to mention naps to take (because sitting on the beach is *exhausting*) under the umbrella, hiding from the mid-day sun.

The Likeness by Tana French.  I mentioned earlier that the writing and narrator’s voice in this book are extremely engaging.  Keishon noted in the comments that French’s books are character studies about the narrators, even to the point of overshadowing the mysteries that they are ostensibly solving.  Knowing that might’ve changed my approach to reading this book (and will form how I read her Faithful Place), but ultimately doesn’t change my opinion of this book: beautifully written yet not a keeper.

Delusion in Death by J.D. Robb.  I think it’s time for me to take a hiatus from this series.  There are as many pages dog-eared with things that were wrong or irritated me as there are for passages that I enjoyed.  Typos, wrong name used, and scientific impossibilities (confirmed by The BioChemist in a cranky text* to me, thank you).  Add in the repetition of standard Robb phrases (marriage is as complicated and slippery as cop work, etc.).  Then there’s the Ever Present Roarke, and the fact that he was permitted to enter a crime scene.  No.  Just no.  Have no defense attorneys filed motions to suppress evidence he touched?  If not, why not?  Because that seems like a prime avenue for stretching out the pretrial and trial period.  Don’t even get me started on Eve’s initial insistence that the attack wasn’t “terrorism”. Nothing has changed about Robb’s writing or the style of this series…which may be the problem?  Time for a break.

The Preacher by Camilla Lackberg.  Second book of Lackberg’s procedural series starring Patrik Hedstrom and Erica Falck.  I’m reading these out of order, since I  began with The Stonecutter (the most recently translated book, third in the series).  Sooner or later I’ll get to the first book, The Ice Princess.  This book felt a little scattered, and a lot of the language seemed a little elementary and kind of wonky, possibly a function of the translation into English.  Random observation:  in the first half of the book Erica is called Patrik’s girlfriend, but that changes to wife in the second half.  Except in the third book of the series, they are not married.  Translation glitch?

By the River by Katey Hawthorne.  Not sure what to think of this m/m novel.  The ending felt like an HFN rather than HEA, vaguely squicked by the narrator, although I can’t really explain why.

Blue Blood by Susan McBride.  DNF.

Bad Boyfriend by K.A. Mitchell.  Re-read.

In progress:  Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson and The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

 

*Edited to include the text: “Arsenic in hair is a useful test for long term poisoning, not happened that afternoon poisoning – it has to be metabolized and incorporated in hair proteins in place of normal sulfur- and selenium-containing amino acids.  FAIL, In Death.”  I’d already dog-eared that page to query the science, but she answered that question without me asking.