Pink Lemonade Cake Murder
Author: Joanne Fluke
As soon as I received the email announcing my review copy for this new Hannah Swensen mystery, I jumped right into reading. Not surprising as I have been reading this series since book 1 came out in 2000. I'm a die-hard fan of Hannah, her sisters, Norman, Mike....and all the characters from Lake Eden.
This series is one of the first cozy mystery series I ever read. Probably The Cat Who... books were the first. But this one was definitely my favorite back then. I eagerly awaited each book, and wondered if Hannah would ever make The Choice (faithful readers understand exactly what I mean there).
I will faithfully read each book in this series until the end. 29 books in I can't really abandon the series.
But.....
With a heavy heart I'm going to post an honest review.
I love this series. I love the characters. The recipes are always yummy. And there are always cute moments and some good amateur sleuthing. However, the writing quality has taken a noticeable nose-dive over the past few years. I will stand by my opinion expressed several years ago that I firmly believe these books are no longer written by the same author. I have no facts to support my guess, other than the drastic changes in writing style and quality of this series.
The problems:
Constant repetition. For example, in this newest book, Hannah repeats the ingredients for a stew she cooks for supper at least four times. Over and over again. Each character that enters the room gets the explanation for her lovely stew all over again in entirety. Character and recipe names are also repeated again and again. Makes the dialogue very clunky and hard to read. It's poor executed story padding and bad writing.
Recipes and cooking explanations overused. This is a culinary cozy series, so cooking/recipes are part of the subplot. But, poorly written dialogue and constant references to cooking and recipes completely overshadowed the mystery portions of this new book. I love the recipes, and I used to enjoy mentions of Hannah's culinary creations to fluff up the story. But it's very obvious that the cooking subplot is being used as padding to make the story significantly longer.
Non-engaging and poor attempts at suspense. The mystery and investigation is almost non-existent. The mystery wraps up in a predictable manner. And the cliff hanger at the end is ridiculous.
I referred back to the first few novels in this series. This is not Joanne Fluke's original writing style. Not even close.
It's amateurish writing, plain and simple. The dialogue is terrible. The mystery plots are getting shorter and simpler, with very little time spent on any investigation or suspense/action. The recipes and cooking have taken over almost the entire book and the story is padded so much to add length that I had a hard time reading this book in its entirety, even after being a Hannah fan for 23 years.
For a couple books, it got better. With this new book, it seems the glaringly bad writing is back. How did this book ever get past an editor in this condition?
I will read the next book. I'm a Hannah fan and I will stick by this series until the final book. But I just shake my head and wonder how the books are getting through the editing and publishing process without having some serious edits and re-writes.
**I voluntarily read a review copy of this book from Kensington. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.**
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