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thekatreturns's review
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
This is the better of the two Veronica mars novels and a pretty average-to-good mystery novel. There is so much less misogyny in this than in the show, so thanks, Rob Thomas’s co-writer Jennifer Graham. I highly enjoyed Kristen Bell’s narration, with the exception of her Wallace impression.
The ending is both kind of wacky and able to be predicted if you’ve been paying attention, which is a very delicate balance in a mystery novel. My biggest critique is that dialogue scenes need way, way, way less stage directions. It felt at times like the writers had an unaired episode of Veronica Mars in their heads and were creating audio descriptions for accessibility. So the book is fast paced in terms of very easy to get through, but a lot of the dialogue is just a slog of reading where people are standing and what they’re doing with their hands.
Overall, this novel is better than a huge chunk of Veronica mars episodes and I would recommend it to any fan of the show. I probably would not recommend it to anyone who hasn’t seen seasons 1-3 of the show plus the movie.
The ending is both kind of wacky and able to be predicted if you’ve been paying attention, which is a very delicate balance in a mystery novel. My biggest critique is that dialogue scenes need way, way, way less stage directions. It felt at times like the writers had an unaired episode of Veronica Mars in their heads and were creating audio descriptions for accessibility. So the book is fast paced in terms of very easy to get through, but a lot of the dialogue is just a slog of reading where people are standing and what they’re doing with their hands.
Overall, this novel is better than a huge chunk of Veronica mars episodes and I would recommend it to any fan of the show. I probably would not recommend it to anyone who hasn’t seen seasons 1-3 of the show plus the movie.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcohol, Death, Violence, Gun violence, Kidnapping, Murder, and Toxic relationship
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