Thursday, February 13, 2014

BOOK REVIEW: A Bat in the Belfry, by Sarah Graves

A Bat in the Belfry
A Home Repair is Homicide Mystery
Author: Sarah Graves
Publisher: Bantam (Random House Publishing) 
Publication Date: April 30, 2013 

I've only read one other book in Sarah Graves' "Home Repair is Homicide" series, Wreck the Halls, and that was so long ago I don't remember anything about it. I vaguely remember liking it, but based on my review (written before I had a book blog, back when I just jotted down my thoughts on the books I'd read in a little notebook on my night stand), I did not.

Still, after several weeks of increasingly depressing reads, I was all set for a nice cozy mystery. The problem was that this one was a little darker than I had hoped, opening with a young teenaged girl being bound and murdered in the church belfry. Eesh. But it wasn't quite tense enough to be a thriller either, so it was sort of in between "cozy" and "gruesome." 




I found the book--particularly the first few chapters--to be needlessly confusing because the author kept switching perspectives from character to character. It took me much longer than it should have to even figure out who the star of the book was (like I said, I didn't remember much from the other book in the series that I had read).

I didn't find this book "soooo boring" as I apparently did with Wreck the Halls, but it certainly wasn't my favourite either. The writing was far from exceptional (I would call it passable, but not great). I think this time I need to start listening to my own advice and give up on this series for good.

Disclaimer: I received a digital galley of this book free from Edelweiss (Above the Tree Line). I was asked to write an honest review, though not necessarily a favourable one. The opinions expressed are strictly my own.



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