karireads's review
adventurous
funny
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
ssejig's review
4.0
I really should add a category of "Judged this book by it's cover" because that is the entire reason I downloaded this book from my library.
I knew this wasn't the first book in this series but I felt absolutely no sense of missing out on who people were or what their stories were. I was a bit disappointed that there wasn't much of the paranormal aspect in this book but it was a light touch.
Esther Diamond, actress/waitress, finally slept with Detective Connor Lopez. Now it's been a week, and he hasn't called (LOVED the callbacks to this in the rest of the book). Where does she next see him? When he's raiding the restaurant she works at. So, now she has no love life and no place to work.
Luckily, through a series of odd events, she does get a role on a film. It's a low-budget independent film, but still. It's work. Too bad so many things seem to be going wrong on set... including a backer who's killed by a cursed fortune cookie.
Very light, very quick read that never quite made me laugh out loud but did make me grin a number of times. The next book, "Abracadver" is already on my TBR list.
I knew this wasn't the first book in this series but I felt absolutely no sense of missing out on who people were or what their stories were. I was a bit disappointed that there wasn't much of the paranormal aspect in this book but it was a light touch.
Esther Diamond, actress/waitress, finally slept with Detective Connor Lopez. Now it's been a week, and he hasn't called (LOVED the callbacks to this in the rest of the book). Where does she next see him? When he's raiding the restaurant she works at. So, now she has no love life and no place to work.
Luckily, through a series of odd events, she does get a role on a film. It's a low-budget independent film, but still. It's work. Too bad so many things seem to be going wrong on set... including a backer who's killed by a cursed fortune cookie.
Very light, very quick read that never quite made me laugh out loud but did make me grin a number of times. The next book, "Abracadver" is already on my TBR list.
veronica87's review
2.0
2.5 stars
I like this series for what it is, a light and comical urban fantasy that doesn't take itself seriously at all. That said, parts of it are starting to drag out to the point of being annoying. For one thing, I had hoped that the last book finally saw the end to the will-they/won't-they nature of the whole Esther/Lopez mess. And yes, I mean mess. We spend almost the entire book hashing out why Lopez hadn't called Esther in the week since the events of the last book went down then, when it seems like that issue is finally resolved, things get upended again. This is book six so please, with all due respect, either shit or get off the pot. And that goes double for Lopez's maybe mystical powers (that he knows nothing about). Once again we get a brief demonstration of those powers in action when Esther's life is threatened and, once again, it goes nowhere. I know this series is more comedy than anything else but even comedy has to keep building on storylines. Since this series doesn't have a long arc villain, its these smaller plot threads that tie all the books together but if nothing ever changes, well, interest fades. And that's where I'm finding myself after six books with the series, still somewhat invested but feeling myself starting to drift away.
I like this series for what it is, a light and comical urban fantasy that doesn't take itself seriously at all. That said, parts of it are starting to drag out to the point of being annoying. For one thing, I had hoped that the last book finally saw the end to the will-they/won't-they nature of the whole Esther/Lopez mess. And yes, I mean mess. We spend almost the entire book hashing out why Lopez hadn't called Esther in the week since the events of the last book went down then, when it seems like that issue is finally resolved, things get upended again. This is book six so please, with all due respect, either shit or get off the pot. And that goes double for Lopez's maybe mystical powers (that he knows nothing about). Once again we get a brief demonstration of those powers in action when Esther's life is threatened and, once again, it goes nowhere. I know this series is more comedy than anything else but even comedy has to keep building on storylines. Since this series doesn't have a long arc villain, its these smaller plot threads that tie all the books together but if nothing ever changes, well, interest fades. And that's where I'm finding myself after six books with the series, still somewhat invested but feeling myself starting to drift away.
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