Melliott > Recent Status Updates

This is really fun. A beneficiary of what I would call "deadpan humor." And I like that it's set in New Zealand.

This one is Georgian, not Regency.

I can tell already that I'm going to like these. I love finding a new mystery writer/series I can follow.

I kept having this weird feeling that this book was reminding me of another I had read a few years back, both with its desperate but staunch and heroic tone and the use of language. I finally looked it up today, and it was the same author. Duh!

It's so annoying to get a book that has been badly and carelessly edited and proofread. I have found four misspellings or incorrect usages in the first 130 pages, plus the author used the word "immaculate" descriptively THREE times on ONE page. This was obviously dashed off in a hurry and sent to publication without oversight.

If I had known this was a sequel to the novella The Christmas Book Hunt, I'm not sure I would have picked it up. I didn't care for that so much—I disliked the male protagonist—and, sure enough, I was right! This book opens with the female protagonist down in the dumps because that guy has ghosted her. Not sure I even want to continue, which is a really atypical reaction for me to a Jenny Colgan book!

Wow, some bad editing on page one! the same sentence repeated word for word, three paragraphs apart.

Enjoying this so far. Kemmerer is good with the characters and world-building.

This is better than I expected!

Excited to be reading another in this series. Apparently the last.

You know while you are reading it that this is a useful book, because by the time you are halfway, you are chock full of ideas spilling over and need a pencil and paper to capture them.

OMG I feel another cliffhanger coming...

Why can't Cormoran and Robin just TALK to each other? Assumptions are flying. They should know better by now—it's been seven years! If they don't get together in THIS book, I'm going to be PEEVED.

I don't really see what all the fuss is about.

Nooooo! When I bought this I didn't realize how recently it came out. How long will I need to wait now for the sequel?! Probably a long time, since this is an author who thoroughly researches her material. I mean, that's good, but...damn.

In another, she described the new Head (the sociopathic little boy who grew up and took over the running of the school): "He’s the one releasing the ghosts, like a child with a magic lamp that, instead of casting light, releases nothing but darkness…"

I almost stopped reading this book. One sociopathic little schoolboy was about to harm an animal, and I thought, I don't need to be reading this! But Harris grabbed me with a few literary sentences that reiterated why I like to read her. In one, a new teacher was described as a "mini me" version of a teacher by saying he was "a bonsai version of himself."

I had just started reading this, without realizing for how long I had had it checked out, when the library reclaimed it from me! Hoping to get it back in the next day or two so I can continue.

Am I misremembering, or has Penny rewritten "history"? How is Gamache still in his 50s? And didn't his godfather, Stephen Horowitz, DIE in the book set in Paris? And all this reference to this assistant to the deputy prime minister from a former scandal—is my memory so bad that I simply don't remember that book, or WAS there no book and she's just making up a past for them for this story line? I'm so confused....

I'm intrigued by how all of this will come together.

Both Miss Marblemaw and Jeanine Rowder give off a Dolores Umbridge vibe.

This is a delightfully imaginative story. It is also deeply political, with significance for more than one issue facing us today. I love both aspects.

No matter how hard I try, I just can't feel about Rene Ballard the way I do about Harry Bosch. She still feels flat to me, after multiple novels.