Robert

Already in book 9 with new sound

Reviewed: 10-08-23

Once it started I knew I’d already heard it, but now it has music and sound effects over the reader. Getting a refund and I wish it had been plainly stated it was a modified version of a previous release.

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My last one of the series

Reviewed: 04-28-23

At the beginning of the book, I was tired of the unbelievable characters. I suspect it is because of the modern setting as opposed to a past time.

As the book went on, I was appalled at the portrayal of the victim and how the men in his life accepted his behavior. If the same behavior was directed at women there would have been outrage. I suspect the author was trying to show that gay relationships are the same as heterosexual relationships. Instead, it comes across as very anti-male. I can’t believe she would write the same story with a lesbian murder victim.

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Stopping now

Reviewed: 05-24-21

While I have enjoyed the series from the beginning, I am done with listening to Ms. Cooney's reading. If I ever decide to start reading again I will continue the series.

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1 person found this helpful

Returned because of narration

Reviewed: 12-19-20

I bought this on sale because the topic greatly interested me. As the author explained his methodology and the plan for this book and the two that followed, I immediately looked to see if the other two were available. However, as the book progressed I found the narrator's cadence and odd pauses in the middle of sentences to be just too much to follow. I made it about 150 minutes into the book before I gave up.

If the book was the only volume I might have been able to tough it put, but there are two more books and couldn't take over 80 hours of the narration so I got a refund. Maybe the books will be recorded again at some point in the future? If so, I will definitely give them a try.

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Meh.

Reviewed: 10-16-20

For a book that wants to lift up cozy mysteries and shout their merits along side the "good books" the protagonist believes should be read, it seems to not know what makes up a good cozy. There's never been a more morose, self-pitying heroine. She spends the entire book whining about how her life has turned out while focusing over and over, and we get to hear it, on how things aren't working out for her.

Cozies should have fun, or at least interesting, supporting casts. Maybe this one does, but we never get to find out because of Summer's obsession on her self-doubts and insecurities. No wonder she's single. A good cozy should make you care about the protagonist and their friends: this one fails at that.

I made it through about 60% of the book and couldn't stop from falling asleep while listening to it. Partly because of the plodding story, but mostly because Christa Lewis' reading style for the book is so slow and serene, it is like she's reading off a list of casualties from the Titanic in a library. She's not a bad narrator, but the choice of pacing and tone in her voice just doesn't work for the material.

On the plus side, if it were a novel of rediscovery of one's roots, it wouldn't be too bad and, as I said, the narrator is not terrible. It's just the story and narrative direction are misguided for the genre.

I'll be returning this one and I'm not at all concerned with whodunnit, though I am pretty sure I know, and I am not good at picking out the murderer.

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4 people found this helpful

Everything's changed

Reviewed: 03-25-20

The first six books in the series are awesome con/heist stories with a comic twist. This one is a bad b-movie adventure story with the characters acting like spoofs of themselves from the first six book with cheesy dialogue. Nick is no longer a suave con man, but he has become a wisecracking, sex-obsessed petty criminal. Jake suffered the worst: he has become a cartoon version of himself, being completely obsessed with destruction and big weapons.

None of the supporting crew from the first books appeared. Instead, a bunch of cartoon stereotypes are tagging along for no real reason, from the stoner surfer to the gold-digging porn star turned trophy wife and Instagram model.

If you really liked the first six books, you might want to skip this. If you want a bad Scooby gang story, more juvenile than the cartoon, try this one.

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Unbelievable

Reviewed: 02-20-20

The book was fine up until the end, when murderer was revealed and the book went from a perfectly pleasant mystery to creating an unbelievable threat. To say much more would be spoiling details and I don't want to do that. It just fell completely flat at the end because of the absurdity.

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11 people found this helpful

Marty's an idiot!

Reviewed: 01-07-20

It's hard to listen to Marty's mind fly onto all kinds of stupid theories that he then acts upon, even though he's supposed to be an intelligent engineer.

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1 person found this helpful

Narrator on speed

Reviewed: 11-26-19

The story seemed to be developing okay, but it wasn't enough to make me want to power through the narration. I tried to keep listening, but every couple of minutes I had to check to make sure I didn't speed up the audio. The narrator is what my grandmother would call a motor mouth: she spoke so fast at times I couldn't keep up.

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1 person found this helpful

Not about weekends

Reviewed: 11-16-19

As other reviewers have stated, it is not about long weekends, but it is more about architecture and the selling off of country houses. Bot what it is advertised to be.

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3 people found this helpful