Night Shift by Charlaine Harris

From Goodreads: At Midnight’s local pawnshop, weapons are flying off the shelves—only to be used in sudden and dramatic suicides right at the main crossroads in town. Who better to figure out why blood is being spilled than the vampire Lemuel, who, while translating mysterious texts, discovers what makes Midnight the town it is. There’s a reason why witches and werewolves, killers and psychics, have been drawn to this place. And now they must come together to stop the bloodshed in the heart of Midnight. For if all hell breaks loose—which just might happen—it will put the secretive town on the map, where no one wants it to be...

I am so sad to be saying goodbye to the residents of Midnight, Texas in this last book of the trilogy! I feel like we'd just really warmed up to them all, their quirks, their secrets, their abilities, and now it's over! A lot happens in this third book, most of it very spoilery if you haven't read the first two. There is a lot of big weirdness, some big reveals that I really didn't see coming, and while I did enjoy Night Shift, I really feel like it could have been made into a longer series that explored the characters more. Each book was successively more paranormal than the last as each of the residents is revealed for what they are, or what they can do.  Some you start out knowing and their talents grow or develop in different ways, some wait until near the end to show themselves in their glory, though you begin to suspect earlier on.

While I have a few personal criticisms of the plot, I really am sorry to see it end, and you know that when you feel that way, it was a good story, with well developed characters that have come to life.  There were character crossovers with Harris' other series, Manfred from the Harper Connelly series (probably my favorite of her stories), and I suspect Lemuel's associates may have appeared in the Sookie Stackhouse series though I'm only a few books in, so it's possible we'll see some of Midnight's townfolk again somewhere down the line.  Hope springs eternal!

Challenges:
2016 New Releases Challenge
2016 I Love Libraries Challenge
E9 of the COYER Bingo Challenge

COYER - Clean Out Your E-Reader Summer 2016 - June 18 - September 2, 2016

What is it?

A read and review-a-thon that takes place from June 18th through Sept 2nd. Originally intended to help you work off those e-reader freebies, the Summer COYER throws those rules away and lets you read anything you want, any price you want, library books, freebies, review copies, your own purchased books, anything!

Where do you sign up?

Check out the rules and regs (I thought you said we threw away the rules?! We did, sort of, but you still have to sign up in the right place and do challenges in the right place, that kind of thing) at Fantasy is more Fun, Because Reading or Books, Movies, Reviews! Oh My!. All three have the same sign up, so you can go to any of them.

Then what?

Read! Read like the wind!  Do some reviews and just have fun! We also have a facebook group!

Currently Reading:




Finished - To Be Reviewed:

   


Reviewed:

Make Me Read It Read-a-thon - July 9th - 16th

This is my first time joining this read-a-thon, but since I love voting things, this sounds like fun! In this read-a-thon, you make a list of books that you want/need to read, and your friends vote on them from now until the read-a-thon starts, then you begin reading with the most popular choice and see how far you can get down the list! If you think that sounds like fun and want to join in, check out the sign up post over at The Innocent Smiley! We'd love to have you! Because it means more voting, heehee!

For my list I'm including all of the "Pick it for me" books that I've had chosen for me, but not gotten around to yet, a couple from this year's Hugo Nominations that I need to get read before I can vote for best novel, and a few from other authors that will be at MidAmericon that I haven't read anything by yet, but want to before we go! I will probably only get to 2 of maybe 3 of these if I'm lucky.

Here are links to them on Goodreads so you can see what they are about:



Vote Here

Results
I can't wait to see what you pick for me!

The Fold by Peter Clines

The Fold by Peter Clines

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Synopsis:

STEP INTO THE FOLD.
IT’S PERFECTLY SAFE.

The folks in Mike Erikson's small New England town would say he's just your average, everyday guy. And that's exactly how Mike likes it. Sure, the life he's chosen isn’t much of a challenge to someone with his unique gifts, but he’s content with his quiet and peaceful existence.

That is, until an old friend presents him with an irresistible mystery, one that Mike is uniquely qualified to solve: far out in the California desert, a team of DARPA scientists has invented a device they affectionately call the Albuquerque Door. Using a cryptic computer equation and magnetic fields to “fold” dimensions, it shrinks distances so that a traveler can travel hundreds of feet with a single step.

The invention promises to make mankind’s dreams of teleportation a reality. And, the scientists insist, traveling through the Door is completely safe.

Yet evidence is mounting that this miraculous machine isn’t quite what it seems—and that its creators are harboring a dangerous secret.

As his investigations draw him deeper into the puzzle, Mike begins to fear there’s only one answer that makes sense. And if he’s right, it may only be a matter of time before the project destroys…everything.

****************

My Review:

This starts out as an intellectual, scientific mystery, and ends with quite a bit of action. The mystery is fascinating and eerie, the perpetrators forcing the action I felt was kind of at odds with the rest of the book. I felt like their development wasn't quite up to the same standard as the detail that went into the problem itself. And the very end, well, that was pretty convenient, but also totally opens the way for a series of books.

I did like Mike a lot, the rest of the characters were fine, some had more personality than others, Olaf seemed to be a much more developed character than Neil, or Sasha, which might have been on purpose. I don't know much about eidetic memory, but Mike's way of controlling and directing it to keep himself sane, productive and not overwhelmed was interesting.

Overall it was an intriguing conundrum and I would definitely recommend it to Sci-Fi fans especially interesting in parallel universe themes.

I received my copy from Blogging for Books in return for an honest review.

View all my reviews