Vilja Reads
I'm a student, so I don't have nearly as much time for leisure reading as I'd like. If I manage to read an entire course book instead of just the assigned chapters, I'll review that here, too.
I started on Kate Shackleton's first adventure...
Oof. Let me tell you, the author has improved by leaps by A Medal for Murder, and bounds by Murder in the Afternoon. (Perhaps tellingly, the latter is dedicated to her assistant, Amy Sophie McNeil.) If I hadn't read those two before starting this, I might never have gone on - which would have been a shame! Here, the characters and the setting are just as well thought out, and I expect the ensuing mystery will be just as cleverly constructed, but the storytelling is amateurish, expository - the worst kind of telling-not-showing. And, were I the author, I would have thought twice about having so many references to manure in the first chapter.
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