Review: ALL THE LITTLE LIARS

All The Little Liars by Charlaine Harris
Book 9 of the Aurora Teagarden mysteries
Read by Therese Plummer
Format: ebook & audiobook
Genre: murder mystery

About All The Little Liars:

#1 New York Times bestseller Charlaine Harris returns to her Aurora Teagarden mystery series with a fabulous new book featuring the small-town Southern librarian.

Aurora Teagarden is basking in the news of her pregnancy when disaster strikes her small Georgia town: four kids vanish from the school soccer field in an afternoon. Aurora’s 15-year-old brother Phillip is one of them. Also gone are two of his friends, and an 11-year-old girl who was just hoping to get a ride home from soccer practice. And then there’s an even worse discovery — at the kids’ last known destination, a dead body.

While the local police and sheriff’s department comb the county for the missing kids and interview everyone even remotely involved, Aurora and her new husband, true crime writer Robin Crusoe, begin their own investigation. Could the death and kidnappings have anything to do with a group of bullies at the middle school? Is Phillip’s disappearance related to Aurora’s father’s gambling debts? Or is Phillip himself, new to town and an unknown quantity, responsible for taking the other children? But regardless of the reason, as the days go by, the most important questions remain. Are the kids still alive? Who could be concealing them? Where could they be?

With Christmas approaching, Aurora is determined to find her brother…if he’s still alive.

After more than a decade, #1 New York Times bestseller Charlaine Harris finally returns to her fan-favorite Aurora Teagarden series with All the Little Liars, a fabulously fun new mystery.

Source: Info in the About All The Little Liars was taken from GoodReads at https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28220808-all-the-little-liars on 15/05/2017.

My Thoughts:

I read this series, like, donkey's years ago! Then all of a sudden I come across another book in this series more than ten years later! Whoa! That is a long hiatus!! And only Charlaine Harris can revive back to life a series that long dead. I wonder why she decided to write again in the Aurora Teagarden's world, after all this time... Speaking of which, I find the story flow a little bit sluggish... Sluggish?! ...heck! It's a little bit under crawling pace... at less than a snail's pace!!... The main reason being that I have already forgotten a lot of the characters and events from previous books. So I had to stop and think, who was who? And did Roe got married before?? Yeah, that was how long ago I've read this series... But I remember Therese Plummer's sleepy voice! And am very happy to be listening to it again! But after a while, it all comes back more easily this time... after an annoyingly interminable time.... *sigh* ... did I say it was a long time ago??...

Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 4.5
Character development = 3.5
Story itself = 3
Writing Style = 4
Ending = 3
World building = 3
Cover art = 1
Pace = (7 hrs and 51 mins listening time)
Plot = 4
Narration = 4.5

Overall Rating: 3 out of 5 cherries


Books In Aurora Teagarden Mysteries:

 

About Charlaine Harris
	Charlaine Harris is a New York Times bestselling author who has been writing for over thirty years. She was born and raised in the Mississippi River Delta area. Though her early works consisted largely of poems about ghosts and teenage angst, she began writing plays when she attended Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. She switched to novels a few years later, and achieved publication in 1981 with Sweet and Deadly. After publishing two stand-alone mysteries, Harris launched the lighthearted Aurora Teagarden books with Real Murders, a Best Novel 1990 nomination for the Agatha Awards. Harris wrote eight books in her series about a Georgia librarian. In 1996, she released the first in the much darker Shakespeare mysteries, featuring the amateur sleuth Lily Bard, a karate student who makes her living cleaning houses. Shakespeare’s Counselor, the fifth—and final—Lily Bard novel, was printed in fall 2001. By then, Harris was feeling the call of new territory. Starting with the premise of a young woman with a disability who wants to try inter-species dating, she created The Sookie Stackhouse urban fantasy series before there was a genre called “urban fantasy.” Telepathic barmaid Sookie Stackhouse works in a bar in the fictional northern Louisiana town of Bon Temps. The first book in the series, Dead Until Dark, won the Anthony Award for Best Paperback Mystery in 2001. Each subsequent book follows Sookie through adventures involving vampires, werewolves, and other supernatural creatures. The series, which ended in 2013, has been released in over thirty languages. Sookie Stackhouse has proven to be so popular that Alan Ball, creator of the HBO television series Six Feet Under, announced he would undertake the production of a new HBO series based upon the books He wrote and directed the pilot episode for that series, True Blood, which premiered in September of 2008. In October 2005, the first of Harris’s new mystery series about a young woman named Harper Connelly debuted with the release of Grave Sight. Harper has the ability to determine the cause of death of any body. After four novels, this series is on hiatus. Now Harris is working on a trilogy of graphic novels with Christopher Golden and artist Don Kramer, “Cemetery Girl.” On her own she is writing a new series set in the small town of Midnight, Texas. Harris has also co-edited a series of very popular anthologies with her friend Toni L.P. Kelner, aka Leigh Perry. The anthologies feature stories with an element of the supernatural, and the submissions come from a rare mixture of mystery and urban fantasy writers. Professionally, Harris is a member of the Mystery Writers of America, the American Crime Writers League, Sisters in Crime, and the International Crime Writers Association. She is a past member of the boards of Sisters in Crime and MWA, and she has served as president of the MWA. She is also a member of Science Fiction Writers of America, Horror Writers Association, and Romance Writers of America, just to make sure she’s covered. Personally, Harris has been married for many years. She mother of three wonderful children and the grandmother of two. She lives in central Texas, and when she is not writing her own books, she reads omnivorously. Her house is full of rescue dogs.
charlaineharris.com | facebook | twitter | goodreads | amazon | google+ | instagram

The Narrator
	Therese Plummer is an actor and voice over artist living and working in New York City. Favorite roles to date include TV: Rose Nerrick, The Good Wife, Andy in Law and Order SVU. Stage: Celebrity Row; New York Theatre Workshop, Under Tillage, The Irish Repertory Theatre. Off-off Broadway credits include The Vagina Monologues, Suzanne in Twilight of the Gold’s and Madeline in the Award Winning Samuel French Short play The Sweet Room. Comedy Credits include Improv at Upright Citizens Brigade and Stand-up at Caroline’s Comedy Club. Therese also performed her one woman show, Ribbons Undone, at the Here Arts Center. Therese records audio books for Audible.com, Recorded Books and Talking Books, Inc. As an adolescent counselor, Therese spent five years utilizing Drama therapy techniques in individual and group settings before moving to New York. She shares a passion of creating, helping and entertaining and feels incredibly lucky to do all three.
www.thereseplummer.com | twitter | facebook | goodreads | google+ | audible

FTC Disclosure:
This book was purchased with private funds.
No money received for this review.

Review: PLAYING POSSUM

Playing Possum by Charlaine Harris
Published in the An Apple For The Creature anthology
Book 11.1 short story in the Sookie Stackhouse series
Format: hardback
Genre: adult urban fantasy

About An Apple For The Creature:

Includes a never-before-published Sookie Stackhouse story!

What could be scarier than the first day of school? How about a crash course in the paranormal from Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner, editors of Home Improvement: Undead Edition? Your worst school nightmares—taking that math test you never studied for, finding yourself naked in school assembly, not knowing which door to enter—will pale in comparison to these thirteen original stories that take academic anxiety to whole new realms.

In #1 New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris’s story, "Playing Possum," Sookie Stackhouse brings enough birthday cupcakes for her nephew's entire class but finds she's one short when the angry ex-boyfriend of the school secretary shows up.

When her guardian, Kate Daniels, sends her undercover to a school for exceptional children, teenaged Julie learns an all-new definition of "exceptional," in New York Times bestselling author Ilona Andrews's "Magic Tests."

For those who like fangs with their forensics, New York Times bestselling author Nancy Holder offers "VSI," in which FBI agent Claire is tested as never before in a school for Vampire Scene Investigation.

And in New York Times bestselling author Thomas Sniegoski's "The Bad Hour," Remy Chandler and his dog Marlowe find evil unleashed in an obedience school.

You'll need more than an apple to stave off the creatures in these and nine other stories. Remember your first lesson: resistance is fruitless!

Includes stories by: ILONA ANDREWS, AMBER BENSON, RHYS BOWEN, MIKE CAREY, CHARLAINE HARRIS, DONALD HARSTAD, STEVE HOCKENSMITH, NANCY HOLDER, FAITH HUNTER, TONI L.P. KELNER, MARJORIE LIU, JONATHAN MABERRY, THOMAS SNIEGOSKI

Source: Info in the About An Apple For The Creature was taken from GoodReads at http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13543159-an-apple-for-the-creature on 10/10/2012.

My Thoughts:

This tops Sookie's too stupid to live (TSTL) act! You are in a crisis situation with an armed gunman and everything is about to go to hell. You know this because you've read the mind of the perpetrator. You have your car and your car keys. So what do you do? Normally people would opt for survival and head for safety. But, Sookie? Nope, that is too much to ask! She takes her nephew to hide into the middle of the danger zone instead of hopping into the car and heading for safety, i.e., the nearest police station. Don't that beats it all!?! This is the book which made me stop buying this series.

Empirical Evaluation:
Story Telling Quality = 3
World Building = 3
Character Development = 0.5
Plot = 0
Pace = 3
Story Itself = 0
Ending = 0

Overall Rating: 1 out of 5 cherries


Books In The Sookie Stackhouse series:

Review: DEAD RECKONING

Dead Reckoning by Charlaine Harris
Read by Johanna Parker
Book 11 of the Sookie Stackhouse series
Format: audiobook
Genre: adult urban fantasy

About Dead Reckoning:

With her knack for being in trouble's way, Sookie witnesses the firebombing of Merlotte's, the bar where she works. Since Sam Merlotte is now known to be two-natured, suspicion falls immediately on the anti-shifters in the area. But Sookie suspects otherwise and she and Sam work together to uncover the culprit - and the twisted motive for the attack. But her attention is divided. Though she can't 'read' vampires, Sookie knows her lover Eric Northman and his 'child' Pam well - and she realises that they are plotting to kill the vampire who is now their master. Gradually, she is drawn into the plot -which is much more complicated than she knows. Caught up in the politics of the vampire world, Sookie will learn that she is as much of a pawn as any ordinary human - and that there is a new Queen on board . . .

Source: Info in the About Dead Reckoning was taken from GoodReads at http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7981206-dead-reckoning on 24/09/2011.

My Thoughts:

In this book, Sookie's ponytail caught fire thus her hair needed to be pruned... do you think her blond curls would be as short as Cassie's in the pic here? One thing remains the same... the main protagonist, Sookie Stackhouse, is still too stupid to live... *sigh*... however she seems to be improving, or I'm getting used to it and more tolerant... either way, I find this book a whole lot less annoying than the rest of the books in this series thus far. The ending resolved the story's main dilemma, however, it was sort of an anticlimactic after all the build up tension towards it in the plot. In other words, Ms. Harris seems to have improved in the plot development and story structure department but it seems that her story telling quality has slagged a little bit with this book.

Empirical Evaluation:
Story Telling Quality = 3
World Building = 5
Character Development = 3
Plot = 4
Pace = N/A
Story Itself = 3
Ending = 2.5
Narration = 4

Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5 cherries


Books In The Sookie Stackhouse series: