Sunday, April 28, 2013

Roast Mortem, by Cleo Coyle

Read on my Kindle. This is the ninth installment of Cleo Coyle's Coffeehouse Mystery series and I have mixed feelings about it. I really liked the look inside the workings of an FDNY house, but the execution of the story felt kind of clunky. The metaphors were a little too obvious; the dialogue was a little too unnatural; the recipes were a little too numerous; the characters were acting a little too much out of character; and the plot was a little too much like the TV series "House" (this is what happened! no? then this must be it. no? then how about this? no? does this work? i knew it all along.). To top it off, the Kindle edition I read was riddled with typos. I don't know if the print version suffered the same fate; I tend to think "probably" since the first few books of the series had the same problem.

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

Read on my Kindle. I didn't have high expectations for zombies at Longbourne, but I was pleasantly surprised at how well they blended into the story. It was amusing to go back and forth between this book and Jane Austen's original and realize just how much snark came from her; it gave me a whole new appreciation of the source material. I thought this was really well done and quite satisfying.