AUTHOR: Carter Pugh
SERIES:
GENRE: fantasy
AGE: adult
BLURB: Murder Mystery meets Urban Fantasy in this coming-of-age tale where nothing is as it seems. Meet Clarke Carpenter, a thirty-year-old nanny and student who desires a life more substantial than her own, full of magic and wonder. After moving to the city, hoping to overcome her insecurities and claim a more vibrant life, her world unexpectedly upturns when she is accused of murdering her roommate. Clarke’s dreams of a fairytale existence are obliterated…or are they? Follow along in this thrilling first installment of the Death Book series as Clarke discovers the mystery of who she is.
Thank you to the author for a copy of this book!
I found the main character, Clarke, a very relatable thirty-year old. I enjoyed the quirks that Pugh endowed her with. I felt that they made her a more realistic character. I thought that there were some amusing moments in the book itself, but I did feel that every other character wasn’t nearly fleshed out enough to make them interesting.
This is a relatively short book, and while the concept itself was interesting, I felt that the world building was lacking, and as I said previously, the other characters weren’t fleshed out.
I found this book an easy read, the writing style was simple and a breeze to get through. I love a good murder mystery, but I just found the runup to it awkward in some aspects. Like the pacing wasn’t working for me.
I think if parts of this were more fleshed out that it may have worked better. We go from a lot of telling about Clarke’s background to the mystery, to it being solved, and the “fantasy” aspect didn’t play a huge part, but is clearly going to play a part later.
This book definitely had potential – it just didn’t hit the nail on the head for me.