A Charmed Death
By Madelyn Alt
2 1/2 out of 5 Covers
The second book in A Bewitching Mystery series find the town
of Stony Mills rocked by the death of a teenage girl, the second death in only
a few months. Even though the death
could have been a suicide, Maggie O’Neill knows there is something more to
it. And her investigation into a secret
blog only confirms her suspicions.
The characters have a pleasant charm about them that would
make for “good tv;” nice enough to spend an hour watching, but not something to
go out of your way to watch. And in
keeping with the supernatural element, I found one of the more engaging scenes
to be Maggie’s first ghost investigation.
As there are many people involved in said investigation, it allowed for
many points of view about the supernatural, including scientific, that made the
ideas understandable and accessible. Additionally,
the author does a good job portraying the mentality of a small town seeing a
rise in the crime rate.
But the author also makes the odd choice of shunting
secondary characters that were introduced in the first novel (Maggie’s family
and friend) to the side. I question why
create them if are going to then ignore them.
And the mystery, like the first book, is fairly easy to solve with
obvious red herrings.
This book really should have on the same level as the first
one, except that Maggie does something monumentally stupid at the end. Having figured out who the culprit is, Maggie,
instead of going to the potential love interest who is also a police officer,
decides to get one last piece of evidence.
At the culprit’s place of work.
In a snow storm. Yeah, nothing
bad could happen. It is such an artificial
set up that it just made me weary and took what had been an average
entertaining read down a notch.
No comments:
Post a Comment