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.
Uneasy Spirits (A Victorian San Francisco Mystery #2)
Look. If you liked this book you are no doubt wondering how I could give it such a low score. It's got a clever mystery! An independent female protagonist with consistent characterisation! Chosen-family over blood relations! Spiritualism! Evie May!
Okay, Evie May's storyline was interesting and stayed mostly on the side of sympathetic portrayal rather than freak-show ableism. Maybe? I'm not the best judge.
But mostly I. Just. Didn't. Caaaaaaaare.
I wouldn't have picked up a part #2 if I'd realized it was a part #2, and that certainly didn't help, but I don't know if that's the main problem. I feel I'd find Phryne Fisher just as desperately fulfilling if I'd picked up the series in the middle. There's nothing wrong with Annie and Nate, except maybe that they are too sensible and hygienic and moral and boring. Evie May and dogged determination to finish kept me reading, but neither the mystery nor the protagonists did. Also I'm not the kind of a person whose heart flutters when a weak woman must be saved from her foolish foolhardiness by the rippling muscles of a brave man.
It's a curious experience reading a novel in my favourite genre with some of my favourite things done just the way these things ought to be done according to people who write books about how to write books, and yet being bored out of my skull.