Book Review Thursday - 9/13

I didn't have a book to review last week so there was no post. But 2 books finished this week. I hope that you all survived without my review. :)

Crime Seen is the next book in the Psychic Eye Mystery series by Victoria Laurie. Abby Cooper is still recovering from the gunshot at the end of the last book and she is ignoring her 'crew' as punishment for not warning her about the shooting. And since the recovery is taking so long, the business Abby has built up has dwindled to nothing. Dutch finally starts pushing Abby to answer calls and look into his FBI cold cases to help him solve them.

Abby starts working at a mortgage company to help her new office mate, Candice, look into one of the cases for her. And of course all of the operations in the mortgage company are shady and Abby and Candice get in over their heads.

Things seem to be coming back together for Abby in this book and she may actually have found an office mate who sticks around. And because Candice is a private investigator, it will open up the series to a lot more story lines. A lot of twists in the book, but to me the whole story seemed a little off.

Asta's Book by Barbara Vine is one that I had read before, but I had ordered it on Audible before I realized that I had already read it. I believe that I read the actual book the last time and I would recommend that over the audio version. The narrator was hard to follow at times and she had a sort of lisp that came and went. I almost stopped listening and it actually took me a long time to finish the book because of the narrator.

Asta moved from Denmark to London with her family in 1905. She didn't speak a lot of English and felt cut off from the world so she started a diary and wrote in it for more than 60 years. After her death, Asta's daughter Swanny found the diaries and started publishing them and the books were a hit.

The book jumps back and forth from 1905 to current day with Asta's granddaughter Ann telling the story of a letter that Swanny received that stated that Swanny wasn't who she thought she was. The letter made Swanny question everything about herself and Asta didn't do much to help satisfy Swanny's curiosity.

Barbara Vine is a pen-name of Ruth Rendell and she publishes books under both names. If you are familiar with books written under either name, you know that her books are dark and twisty. This one isn't as dark and twisty as some that I have read, but it was an OK read. I would say to stick with the actual book and not go the route of the audio version. It was much easier to follow the book. And even though I had read the book in the past, I was again surprised at the route it took at the end to complete the mystery.

Share what you are reading in the comments!