This is a book that I wanted to like almost instantly because the cover was giving me all the Veronica Mars vibes and I was totally in the mood for a mystery read. 

Except maybe I wasn’t actually in the mood for a mystery novel. 

Or maybe the little book blurb reviews were straight up lying to my face when they said that this was going to be hilarious. 

And who knows, maybe it is. But all I can definitively say is that the humour in this story is rather dry, which means that it did not infrequently go right over my head. I found myself rereading lines and going, I guess that’s funny, without actually meaning it thus I can only conclude that this was not my kind of humour. I just don’t think that the humour achieved what it came to do, and while that didn’t bother me, I also wasn’t laughing. 

Which is kinda my main problem, because the synopsis promised me hilarity and the story just did not deliver. 

And normally, this wouldn’t be enough to make me the kick the bucket when it comes to finishing a read, but my word this was a really slow paced novel. Which made the plot seem more realistic, but was not particularly stimulating from the mystery side of things. Because while I respect the grind that solving a mystery entails, it feels too much like a grind, and at the first third of the novel, I was already exhausted with the knowledge that I’d read that far. 

It was boring. Accurate, but boring. 

And on top of that, Claudia’s incessant referencing and quoting of Inspector Yuan happened so frequently that I couldn’t ignore it and became annoyed by it. To the point of aggravation. 

Which left me feeling completely uninspired and uncompelled to continue. 

And it’s a bit of harsh reality thought that’s hitting me right now; it’s possible that the main plot is just not interesting. Like the overall mystery itself just wasn’t grabbing me. I was genuinely not interested in the story that was trying to be told. The characters and the writing were adequate enough and given any other sort of mystery this could’ve been a completely fine read. But as it stands, it just was not doing it for me and I didn’t really want to subject myself to the rest of the plot in order to finish the story. 

I think someone out there may enjoy this novel for what it is and I’m sure that there’s an audience for it. But it doesn’t include me. So like, no shade to this author as a debut but I was really not feeling it.