Karin Salvalaggio

I suspect that for fans of this series, this installment in detective Macy Greeley's career will be perfectly satisfying and enjoyable, but I just couldn't get into it. Macy feels like she was shoehorned into the plot from a parallel dimension; she has a tediously complicated backstory and the most awkward sounding conversations with her mother (so awkward it actually made me wonder if the mother was the murderer). And I kept getting her confused with victim's daughter.

That being said, I quite enjoyed the mystery plot itself: there was some nice head-fakery when it came to whodunit and the non-police characters were fairly sympathetic, while the pacing (save for the pointless forays into Macy's uninteresting life) was consistently taut.

I recieved a free review copy of this book from Minotaur Books.

… (altro)

Sometimes you start a book and know immediately that you love it, or that you hate it. Those books are easy. The hardest books are the ones that move along quite nicely, with nothing to dislike but with which you can't quite connect. "Bone Dust White" was one of those books for me.

I read to past the halfway mark, carried forward by the fact that the writing works and I like Macy Greeley, the heavily pregnant detective leading the murder investigation. The pace was slow and the story meandered a bit but there was nothing bad about the book.
In the end, I stopped a little over halfway through when I realised:

I wasn't curious about who had done what to whom because I'd never become engaged in solving a puzzle.

I found Garrett, the main male character, believable but irritating. He's a nice enough guy in an effort-free kind of way but he's cast himself in a victim/martyr role and he bores me.

The two women Garett is letting use him are both toxic and made me feel I was in a crime series twist of The Bold and the Beautiful.

Grace, the young female victim, is so helpless and soft that I want to slap her. I know, I should have more empathy than that, but I have no idea how this girl has survived to be eighteen.

I may try a different series by Karin Salvalaggio but I need a different mix of characters.… (altro)