Reviewed by Ashley Merrill
Before reading this book I assumed that since the author has written award winning books that this novel would set the bar. I was wrong. I found this book to be boring and dull. To be fair, I think Donna Andrews understands the mechanics of good writing, hence the award she has won, but I feel she completely missed the mark on this book.
The first thing I noticed while reading this was that I wasn’t sure who the target audience was. Some chapters I would feel as though she was targeting pre teens when she focused on animals and other simple concepts, and in other chapters, when Viagra and sex were mentioned, I assumed she was targeting a more adult audience. I think this was her first mistake. The reader needs to know who the targeted audience is.
The next issue I had with this book was that it was dull. So very dull. She spent the first good chunk of the book discussing zoo animals as they arrived at the main characters, Meg Langslow’s new house. For starters, that’s random and not believable. When someone is in the middle of moving into a new home and their family starts to bring over llamas, monkeys, hyenas, and what not, the appropriate thing to do would be to say “what the hell?!” instead, Meg accepted it, and the move continued as these animals took over her house and back yard. Donna Andrews spent way too much time going into detail about each and every animal that showed up, forgetting that it is not an important part of the book, and it is too unbelievable to digest anyways!
I found that the book focused more on random zoo animals and random facts about them then the supposed mystery that needs to be solved. Somebody murdered the zoo owner, and instead of the sheriff of the town doing any useful investigating, she has the main character, who is moving into a new home, preparing to get married, and dealing with an ungodly amount of relatives, randomly solve the case. Again, this concept is not believable. Why bother having the sheriff around if a random woman is going to solve the case?! How does she have enough hours in the day to do it?!
I thought
the ending was ridiculous also. Mystery books are supposed to make you
want to
know more and more’ who done it’. In the end it was a random, boring
character,
and they spent only a few pages bringing it to light.
It is over and done within a few pages. There
was absolutely no climax; no exclamation of “oh my god I can’t believe
it was
him!!”. And right after dropping the
dull bomb on who murdered the zoo keeper, they throw a random and
pointless
wrench into this already sloppy story by saying “oh and so and so has
been
snooping around because he is trying to get your
The last thing that I think bothered me the most was when Meg encounters the killer. He pushes her in a ditch and she mangles her leg, gets attacked by a bob cat and is about to be killed by a bow. Instead of begging for her life, screaming, crying in pain, etc etc. Donna Andrews once again makes it completely unbelievable and has her start to become cynical, tell jokes, etc. Then when the killer is overtaken, she faints from the pain. It’s random, it’s sloppy, and boring!
Overall I
was unimpressed with the book. I would not recommend it to anyone and
would not
seek out any other of her books.