Cry Wolf (Silver Hollow Mystery #4)
by Leighann Dobbs
Nice little summer read. Did I love it? No, definitely not. But I did like it.
First of all -- the summary:
The entire gang is back, including Stan Judge, the FBPI agent (Dex's former partner) who is hot to find paranormal activity in Silver Hollow. Also back from book 3 is Caine Hunter, the dashing movie producer, who, much to her dismay, seems to light DeeDee's fire. When a series of disturbances occur on the set, culminating in the death of the lead actor in the movie, DeeDee is in Caine's presence too often for her liking. Who could have killed Tucker Rockwood and why? And will DeeDee ever find her happily ever after.
Okay -- what did I like about the book. Dobbs's characters are very likable. They are well fleshed out and the reader cares about what happens to them. The flow and pacing is good, leading the reader on seamlessly. Great proofing and editing. No cliffhanger ending. Kudos. And this time around, there really was a nice mystery. It wasn't easy to figure out, with the reader only beginning to suspect the truth near the ending. However, the mystery was an aside to the real story, which was DeeDee. It should have been the other way around. It is a mystery series, after all.
So why only three stars. There are a couple of reasons.
The smaller reason is a pet peeve of mine: the use of their as a singular non-gendered pronoun. Yes. I do know that this practice is neither a grammatical error nor is it a new usage. What it is, in my opinion, is a) awkward, and b) lazy on the author's part. Seeing 'their' used when the subject is singular is jarring, which takes the reader out of the story, even if just long enough to say "huh?" before moving on. I'm of the opinion that I would much rather see he/she, her/his, man/woman than the awkward their. In most cases, a simple re-write of the sentence solves the problem. This occurred at about 698 on my Kindle:
In the far corner stood a petite Fae of indeterminate gender who looked equally disorganized, with their shirt on inside out and bright-green hair going every direction.
Again, I am fully aware that this is grammatically correct. What I'm saying is that it is awkward and disjointed and why would an author want either of those two things said about his or her writing? (see what I did there?) Especially when it could easily be fixed by leaving out the word altogether: ...with shirt on inside out and bright-green hair going every direction. Sorry, that was at the beginning of the book and I remembered it all the way to the end. Awkward.
That didn't cost the book a star, however. This second 'unlike' did. First, I'll admit that I knew from the ending of the 3rd book that the 4th book would be about the secondary character, DeeDee, and her upcoming arranged marriage. But the author chose to make this novel, like her last, more about the teenage-like angst of DeeDee and Caine than about the mystery. Okay, DeeDee is a recurring character, who from the beginning has been looking for love, all while knowing she is betrothed to the eldest son of another wolf pack. While I can sympathize with her desire to choose her own husband, I don't want to spend the larger part of the novel sympathizing with her while she uses the mystery I'm reading the novel for as a way of forgetting her woes. Oh, woe is me should have been the title. And, come on, it's a series, we all know that whether she finds true love or not, she will continue in the series. My eyes hurt from so much rolling.
So. This is the last in the series that I have purchased. I think I'm done with Silver Hollow. Like you guys, but, geez, Drama Queens.