Well. It's not... bad, per se? But not particularly exciting, either. Reading this felt more like a chore than anything else, partly because I kept finding small details that annoyed me.
Like the previous two books, I'm quite interested in the world itself and the characters, but everything just drags. And the sequence of events is pretty much the same every time, with minor changes. It was nice to see that Sam and Bo are more secure in their relationship now, but the lack of Bo's kids is seriously confusing at this point. I mean, I get that Sam might not get to see them because his and Bo's relationship is still a secret, but, like, Bo never calls them? He says they're his world, but he barely talks about them and we never really see them. They're basically an accessory at this point and it just feels really weird.
Also, for being supposedly non-amateur investigators, the Scooby Gang is pretty amateurish. As in, it takes them AGES to come up with theories and reach conclusions. And I don't mean that it takes them ages to find the RIGHT theory or conclusion, but that they barely do any thinking. And, if it happens, the process is very rarely described. Usually, we just get an explanation once a character has reached a conclusion, but never quite the path that took them there. I don't know, it just makes the mystery feel very shallow and, at times, makes the characters look like idiots, because they don't point out the obvious clues until all of it has already been laid out in the open.
All in all, it's not a bad book, as said, but just... boring? There's too much that just annoys me. Like the cops who, when they had their guns drawn and were not aiming at someone, were pointing their guns to the sky. What kind of idiot does that? If the gun happens to go off, you might still kill someone once the bullets comes back down because, you know, gravity. If you're not planning to shoot someone, you point it at the ground.
Oh! And also! WHY does Sam insist on unbraiding Bo's hair when they have sex? I mean, okay, I get that long hair is sexy, but the man's hair reaches to his waist. How in the world do they manage to have sex without his hair getting in the way? Or getting stuck on their sweaty bodies? I can barely sleep without getting tangled up in my hair, and you're trying to tell me that these two have hot monkey sex and his hair remains smooth and well-behaved the entire time? I don't buy it.
Okay, fine, these might be minor details in the grand scheme of things, but it just feels... amateurish? All of it, really. So yeah. This will be the last book I read in this series. I don't regret reading these three books, but I'm not at all interested in continuing, either.