Friday 5 July 2013

Review: LAST SCENE ALIVE

Last Scene Alive by Charlaine Harris

Book 7 of the Aurora Teagarden mysteries
Read by Therese Plummer
Format: audiobook
Genre: murder mystery

About Last Scene Alive:
Aurora Teagarden has never forgotten her first case: a serial killer who terrorized suburban Lawrencetown. Now that story is about to hit the small screen. Even if she wanted to, Aurora can't help getting involved. Her ex, Robin, wrote the TV movie's screenplay and her stepson, Barrett, has a starring role. Then there's Celia--the catty actress portraying Roe--who, by the way, also happens to be Robin's latest squeeze. But when Celia is murdered and Barrett is accused, the real-life script takes a deadly turn. Between threatening letters, deranged fans and renewed feelings for Robin, Aurora has one goal: catch a killer and make it to the final scene alive.
Source: Info in the About Last Scene Alive was taken from GoodReads at http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/140080.Last_Scene_Alive on 27/10/2012.

Review:
In this book Charlaine Harris took the "movie adaptation" angle which seems to be a favourite theme of some long-running serieses. Like for example, JD Robb also took this story line up in her In Death series. I'm not complaining, I'm just apprehensive that this theme is starting to recur more frequently and start to feel like "same old, same old". But it hasn't yet, just starting to, so let's keep our fingers crossed and hope that it doesn't become "too used up".

The story telling quality is still great, however, this book does not seem to stand out for me. It felt like just another chapter in Roe's life. Though admittedly her life now has seems to have, all of a sudden and quite coincidentally, acquired a rather busy upheavals lately which never occurred in the last 30 years of her life. I am kinda hoping that Charlaine Harris would give some sort of explanation about this sudden influx of events in Roe's life in future books. It would be nice to have a reason why. It would definitely be an added bonus!

And at the end of it, this book's biggest merit is that it is a part of the Aurora Teagarden series and if you are a fan, you would be wanting this book. But other than that, there isn't much more I could say about this book, thus the rating of three instead of four or higher.

Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 4.5
Character development = 3.5
Story itself = 3
Ending = 3
World building = 3
Cover art = 1
Pace = N/A (7hrs & 4mins listening time)
Plot = 3
Narrator = 3

Overall Rating: 3 out of 5 cherries

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