Read as part of CBR16Bingo: Part 2. This is the second in the Gretchen Lowell and Archie Sheridan series, which currently has six books and is apparently counting.
I’m trying hard not to be a jerk here. This is me.
Look people should write whatever they want. And have fun with it. Writing books is hard. A gender swapped Silence of the Lambs? Hell yeah, baby! Sounds right up my alley, even if I don’t like serial killer books.
Ok so this is gonna be a long-running series. And the writer wants to get kinda silly with it. I guess that’s fine.
But oof.
I tolerated the first book for what it was: goofy fun. I figured that would make the rest of the series fun and goofy. One had to improve on the next.
Sadly no. It was worse than the first, which I rated 3-stars. I so badly want to like this book, to love it. Those scenes with Archie and Gretchen are so good! Everything else, literally everything else is so not! The mystery, the other characters, blah.
Also, what makes this one tough is for the first 1.75 books in the series, I really didn’t like Archie. He’s just the epitome of every single tortured Man Child that people like to write. I know he was literally tortured but he’s also emotionally tortured. Spare me. He just sucks as a character…
But then he and Gretchen have scenes near the end of the book that should save the series…
And they don’t! Because this is a series!
It’s just such a fun concept that I wish was more entertaining than it actually is. Stretching very hard for 3-stars here but those scenes near the end of the book almost made it worth it.