DNF - so very boring

I stopped listening to this book 3.5 hours in because it dragged and became oh-so-boring.

Book one in this series required a credit and going by the not-so-good reviews on GoodReads, I didn't want to risk paying for it, so this is the 1st book in the series that I am listening to and I am not impressed.

Knowing that other books in this series like 'Dead to the Last Drop' are 12 hours long, I thought this book, at 7.5 hours, would be a faster-paced mystery...boy was I wrong!

First, the female lead comes across as a meek, non-confident twenty-something-year-old, rather than a 40-something-year-old business owner with a twenty-something-year-old daughter. On an aside, the author makes the daughter come across as an entitled 14-16-year-old teenager who doesn't have a working cell in her brain, rather than a 20-something who has gotten over a drug addiction and whose parents ...well, mother, has struggled with having enough money to raise said daughter. Yes, in your 20's you tend to do things that in your later years you think back and cringe at your stupidity, but it's like this girl was raised with no common sense or left to her own devices in her formative years so she has no sense of self-preservation.

Second, where is the detecting and progress in finding the killer? This reminds me of those online sleuths who try to solve a crime but have no skill in detection or how to piece together a crime, so they immediately start making suppositions based on gossip and small inconsequential pieces of information. Three hours in and next to nothing has been done to start solving this crime, by the police or by the so-called sleuth. The story just drags with absolutely nothing exciting happening.

Third, immediately after the body is found, the author makes a big show of the lead making sure evidence isn't lost by her deciding to search the grounds for possible evidence but makes her stupid enough to not have her cell phone to take pictures of what she finds so she can later provide it to the cops. Instead, I had to listen to 10 minutes of her trying to draw a flipper in the sand and the snide comments from the cops when her drawing looked like a non-artistic child trying to show rather than effectively describing what they saw. 10 minutes of my life I will not get back.

It's one thing if the cops act like bumbling idiots or someone asks her to look into the matter, but in this story, anything she does is simply because she thinks she knows better. Aside from her finding bullet casings and webbed prints in the sand, no progress has been made. Instead, it's on and on and on, pages upon pages about coffee and the goings on and interactions between her, her ex-husband/business partner, ex-mother-in-law and her daughter... mundane, non-important to the crime or the solving of said crime goings on.

This is the first and last book I will listen to from this author. Even the fact that this book is free will not motivate me to listen to the rest of it.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!