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: THANKLESS IN DEATH

Thankless In Death by JD Robb
Book 37 of the In Death series
Narrated by Susan Ericksen
Genre: police investigation, crime fiction
Format: unabridged audiobook

About Thankless In Death:

In the latest suspense thriller in the #1 New York Times bestselling series, the year 2060 is drawing to a close in New York City and loved ones are coming together for Thanksgiving. But sometimes the deepest hatreds seethe within the closest relationships, and blood flows faster than water…

Lieutenant Eve Dallas has plenty to be grateful for this season. Hosting Roarke’s big Irish family for the holiday may be challenging, but it’s a joyful improvement on her own dark childhood.

Other couples aren’t as lucky as Eve and Roarke. The Reinholds, for example, are lying in their home stabbed and bludgeoned almost beyond recognition. Those who knew them are stunned—and heartbroken by the evidence that they were murdered by their own son. Twenty-six-year-old Jerry hadn’t made a great impression on the bosses who fired him or the girlfriend who dumped him—but they didn’t think he was capable of this.

Turns out Jerry is not only capable of brutality but taking a liking to it. With the money he’s stolen from his parents and a long list of grievances, he intends to finally make his mark on the world. Eve and her team already know the who, how, and why of this murder. What they need to pinpoint is where Jerry’s going to strike next.

Source: Info in the About Thankless In Death was taken from http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16299341-thankless-in-death on 16/06/2013.

Review:

I think one of the main reasons that I am such a fan of this series is because JD Robb creates solid and coherent plots. She does not make her characters act stupid to create the dilemma in the story and subsequently creating an inconsistent character development. 37 books down the line in the series and I couldn't see any of that TSTL (too stupid to live) shit! Even though I was skeptical about Roarke at the start, but because JD Robb creates consistent characters, Roarke grew on me. I got used to him. And I got persuaded that he is a good and loveable alpha male. Besides I am a fan and I want to believe him to be a nice, good alpha.

JD Robb brought into this book her trademark wonderful story telling quality. From the get go the audience is told exactly who the perpetrator is, what the plot is and that it will end in an HEA (happily ever after). What seems to remain is the "how" Lt. Eve Dallas is going to catch the bad guy. Simple right? Well, this is JD Robb we are talking about here and the journey from A to B in this book is what makes reading it enjoyable and not just the story itself. I think this is a testimony of how good a story teller this author is!

Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 5
Character development = 5
Story itself = 4.5
Ending = 4.5
World building = 5
Cover art = 3.5
Pace = N/A (13hrs and 22mins listening time)
Plot = 5
Narration = 4.5

Overall Rating: 4.5 out of 5 cherries


Other Points Of View:
Kathy Martin of Inside Of A Dog

Review: CALCULATED IN DEATH

Calculated In Death by JD Robb
Book 36 of the In Death series
Narrated by Susan Ericksen
Genre: police investigation, crime fiction
Format: unabridged audiobook

About Calculated In Death:

On Manhattan’s Upper East Side, a woman lies dead at the bottom of a brownstone’s basement steps, stripped of all her valuables. Most cops might call it a mugging gone wrong, but Lieutenant Eve Dallas knows better.

A well-off accountant and a beloved wife and mother, Marta Dickenson doesn’t seem the type to be on anyone’s hit list. But when Eve and her partner, Peabody, find blood inside the brownstone, she knows Marta’s murder is the work of a killer who’s trained, yet not professional or smart enough to remove all the evidence.

Eve learns that on the day of her murder Marta was assigned to work on three audits, and begins to suspect that she was killed to cover up fraudulent activity. Eve is good at catching criminals, not crunching numbers, but luckily, she has her billionaire husband, Roarke, to figure out which companies in Marta’s files aren’t on the up-and-up.

When someone steals the files from Marta’s office, Eve must immerse herself in Roarke’s world of big business to figure out who’s cruel and callous enough to hire a hit on an innocent woman. And as the killer’s violent streak starts to escalate, Eve knows she has to draw him out, even if it means using herself as bait....

©2013 J. D. Robb (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

Source: Info in the About Calculated In Death was taken from http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00B1D2LPM&qid=1363980527&sr=1-1 on 22/03/2013.

Review:

It's been a while since the last time I've read an In Death series book and it felt like meeting old friends again after a long separation. It might sound silly but it felt that way. So I was glad to read about Lt. Eve Dallas and the gang again! And despite the high expectations, this book did not disappoint! It still brought with it the same masterful story telling quality, humour, and wonderful relationship dynamics between the characters. And despite this being already Book 36 in the In Death series, it's attraction and fascination for me as a reader hasn't waned even a bit, which is not something anybody can say about a lot of serieses! That is solid evidence of how wonderful a story teller JD Robb is!

Now, even though the theme has been recycled a few times already in the series, the case involving a family member of the crime fighting team making it just a bit too close to home, this one took a slight deviation from previous books in that the family member of the crime fighting team is actually only peripherally involved with the criminals.

But recycled theme or not, JD Robb still makes the story come alive for the reader. Another evidence of JD Robb's talents? Or maybe I am just being a die-hard fan.

Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 5
Character development = 5
Story itself = 4.5
Ending = 4.5
World building = 5
Cover art = 4
Pace = N/A (12 hrs and 52 mins listening time)
Plot = 5
Narrator = 5

Overall Rating: 5 out of 5 cherries

Review: DELUSION IN DEATH

Delusion In Death by JD Robb
Book 35 of the In Death series
Narrated by Susan Ericksen
Genre: police investigation, crime fiction
Format: hardback & unabridged audiobook

About Delusion In Death:

It was just another after-work happy-hour bar downtown, where business professionals unwound with a few drinks, complained about the boss, maybe hooked up with someone for the night. Until something went terribly wrong. At first it was just a friction in the air. The noise intensified. The crowd seemed oppressive. Some sharp words were exchanged, some pushing and shoving.

Then the madness descended. And after 12 minutes of chaos and violence, 80 people lay dead.

Eve Dallas is trying to sort out the inexplicable events. Surviving witnesses talk about seeing things - monsters and swarms of bees. They describe sudden, overwhelming feelings of fear and rage and paranoia. When forensics makes its report, the mass delusions make more sense: it appears the bar patrons were exposed to a cocktail of chemicals and illegal drugs that could drive people into temporary insanity - if not kill them outright.

But that doesn't explain who would unleash such horror - or why. Eve's husband, Roarke, happens to own the bar, yet he's convinced the attack wasn't directed at him. It's bigger than that. And if Eve can't figure it out fast, it could happen again, anytime, anywhere. Because it's airborne....

©2012 Nora Roberts (P)2012 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

Source: Info in the About Delusion In Death was taken from http://www.audible.co.uk/pd?asin=B0091I3K2M on 26/09/2012.

Review:

I finished Book 34 months and months before I managed to get my hands on this book and I was on withdrawal symptoms. Anyway, so when I finally started listening to this book, it was like welcoming back old friends! My only regret is that Bella's appearance was short and sweet. I really like the way a tiny little thing could scare big bad kick-ass Dallas! Guess I'm bloodthirsty that way.

I found in this book the same multi-layered plot which has hooked me to this series. The same great story telling quality which I have come to associate with the In Death series. Or maybe because I am an old die-hard fan that I just find it that way... hard to say from where I'm standing, am no longer objective. But the real proof of how great this series is the fact that this series is already at book 35 and it hasn't staled on me yet, hasn't lost it's touch! That's an achievement in my book! And by the looks of it, I wasn't the only one. Tells a reader that the story telling quality has staying power. At the end of it, I enjoyed this book immensely and looking forward to reading the next In Death installment!

Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 5
Character development = 4.5
Story itself = 4.5
Ending = 4.5
World building = 5
Cover art = 3.5
Pace = N/A (13 hrs and 11 mins listening time)
Plot = 4.5
Narrator = 4

Overall Rating: 4.5 out of 5 cherries

Thank you to RCT Library for letting me borrow the hardback edition of this book.

FTC Disclosure:
The audiobook format was purchased with private funds. The hardback edition was borrowed from the library. No money received for this review.