This is the third book in the Moonstone Bay series by Amanda M. Lee. This paranormal, cozy mystery was published 2019 and the audiobook is narrated by Angel Clark.
The story follows Hadley as she meets the grim reaper, Aisling Grimlock, from Detroit who has arrived on the island on her honey moon, pregnant and sullen, just in time for murders to once again shake island. It is followed by runaway ghosts, old crimes and a crazy cult which Aisling and Hadley get mixed up in.
There is no real need to talk about Hadley and the old characters as they are pretty much the same. Hadley get to take a backseat in this one as well for the new character Aisling who is pretty much a more extreme version of Hadley. Noisy, spoiled, manipulative, childish and a complete nutcase which is often explained of her being a woman or pregnant. This character was so damn annoying that I wanted to stop reading several times. She constantly almost get herself and Hadley killed and the men in her life just shrugs it off and says women can take care of themselves.
What does that have to do with her taking Hadley alone to a cult said to be violent and calling pathetic perverts straight to their faces? It has nothing to do with gender and everything to do with common sense. Something they prove later in the book when Galen and Aisling’s boyfriend get caught by the same cult. It doesn’t come down to gender and her being an impulsive idiot while her husband and father defend her because… I don’t know. They want her dead. That’s the only reason I can come up with.
Someone told me that Aisling was from another series, which might explain why the author thought it was a good idea to let her take over or the random accomplishment of Aisling which is constantly thrown at us.
The problem is still the same as in previous books when it comes to characters. Weirdly ancient values of all the character who seem to shift personality from book to book while having no variety on the characters who pretty much are just copy and pasted. It apparently is the same characters as in the author’s other books and with the entrance of Aisling, I can believe it.
Then the story? What about the mystery? A mixed bag. The mystery starts off fine with a murder and the question who did it, but it is pretty much a done deal from around when the cult is introduced and then it just go on for no reason. There is a lot of hostage drama and long talks how to solve it and Aisling screeching and messing things up while everyone around pretends its charming. It had some bright moments but as it all was said and done, it was a mess. A lot of it seem to be because the very base of the story is the author presenting characters from her other books. The mystery or even the story isn’t really necessary when it’s all about advertising her other books.
This is a 4 out of 10 for me. All the potential gets squandered with a character most seem to hate and a story more revolved around that character rather than the story or mystery. It just might be that I’m too old for this. Those who liked this book seemed to be, at least from what I could see, teenage girls who just squealed and thought the author was a genius for doing a cross-over. Like it hasn’t been done before.
Or they praise her astounding character development, but the characters are exactly the same from when they started the book. Hadley did confront her grandfather but he is still doing the same thing. Hadley is still throwing around magic by accident, most of it is dangerous, Galen is still overprotective and so on. There is no character development from what I can see and when I tried to ask what they mean, most seem to be unable to clarify. I guess it just sound good.
Let me clarify, you can enjoy this book and if you enjoyed whatever series Aisling is from then I would recommend this book because she pretty much takes over the story. But if you are like me, only read this series, then nothing happens in this book that will overall affect the series. You can easily skip it and it won’t make any difference. Take that how you will.
I won’t be continuing this series. Three books in and it still is stomping on the same place with characters so identical and flat I can barely keep them apart. The story has potential but the author seem unable, or unwilling to do anything with it. Which is a pity because the magic, curse on the island, ghosts and many supernaturals could be interesting to explore but it feels like a story that just is copy and pasted. I swear I have read this exact same story before. In the overall series I would go above a four out of ten.
It wasn’t a good start, and it hasn’t become better in the third book. The second book had some better mystery but I don’t like how Hadley’s personality changes from book to book to suit the authors need, or how extremely traditional views, often insulting both the men and the women, this book had. I don’t know what more to say other than I won’t be reading any more from this author. I hope other people liked it better than me though.
With Kind Regards
Senefer.
Read with Senefer 