Tag: Lisa Gardner

(Forgive me cleaning out my 2019 book reviews, half of which I had written and never posted.)

Read for the August theme (a female protagonist in danger) of the 2019 ONTD Reading Challenge | The Neighbor on Goodreads 

This book seems like an odd misstep in the Detective DD Warren series. I’m not one to get mad that I couldn’t solve a mystery or see twists coming, but this one went beyond being literally unpredictable. The intentional misdirection was obvious and it didn’t feel fun to read, just frustrating. The mysterious details ended up feeling more tedious than ominous. 

The Neighbor deals with a missing mother, whose four-year-old child was the only possible witness to whatever happened, with a registered sex offender down the block as a complicating factor. There is something clearly weird going on with the father and the missing mother, and it takes a very long time to figure out what. 

The resolution was…fine? There were some deus ex machina factors on the way to the ending that kind of made me roll my eyes. I read this series for the page-turning thrill and mental junk food of it all, which I didn’t get as much with this one as with previous books, but I will still pick up the next one in the series.

Recommend? No, skip this one, unless you’re a completest about series.
To Read: The rest of the D.D. Warren series.

(Forgive me cleaning out my 2019 book reviews, half of which I had written and never posted.)

Read for the August theme (a female protagonist in danger) of the 2019 ONTD Reading Challenge | Hide on Goodreads 

Hide is the second book in Lisa Gardner’s DD Warren series, which is my current reading guilty pleasure. This installment is basically a Law and Order: SVU episode in book form, which means I enjoyed it immensely. This one involved the case of an underground bunker filled with mummified remains of young girls. 

It was actually adapted for a TNT Mystery Movie Night starring Carla Gugino. While Gugino is infinitely more charming than I find DD to be, the TV movie missed some of the twists and turns that made the book version of the story interesting. If you, like me, have watched all of the SVU episodes possible, go ahead and seek it out (I think it’s on youtube?) but otherwise, the reading experience is more enjoyable.

I can’t recommend this series enough if you’re in a reading rut and want a page-turner.

Recommend? Yes.
To Read: The rest of the D.D. Warren series