Lethal White - Robert Galbraith

This was at the top of the list of books I was looking forward to this year.  Others include the next installment of Game of Thrones which apparently is never going to happen (by the by, I think that’s fine…an author in my opinion doesn’t owe his readers anything.  In case you are not up on your GOT fandom, there is a whole contingent of fans who are furious with him.  He gave us a bunch of books, hours and hours of reading (years for some people...his books are crazy long), he worked with the GOT show runners at HBO to wrap it up…I mean, part of the process of writing is seeing what happens to and with the characters…if its all been mapped out ahead of time and you have to head in a certain direction, I can see why he is like no, that’s not for me.  I feel a little bad for those readers who scorn tv because the HBO version is FANTASTIC and they are missing out and I also kind of hope the books last centuries and our tv technology may be outdated before I retire so that's unfortunate for future readers but well, GRRM has made his contributions to the world, I think we should be grateful and move on) and the next Jamie and Claire Outlander book by Galbadon which seems like it also is never going to come out, though she is working on it and you can see excerpts on her blog so maybe 2020...  

All that aside, here it was, my favorite literary detective, in all his new book glory.  I was so excited and then…well, this.

I don’t want to be a downer on the series-I’m still a huge Galbraith fan.  I love grumpy old Cormoran, I like spunky Robin, I think the mysteries are delightful and the paths to solving them filled with just the right mix of crazy new characters, convenient coincidences and “oh yeah” moments, the right amount of danger around hidden corners and angles that make the story work.  This book though…ugh, it was a slog.  I hate to be all “mental illness sucks” but really, it does, and reading about our heroine going through PTSD was not fun and somehow the way it was portrayed took away from rather than added to my enjoyment of the novel.  I am not sure how it could have been done differently but it was a disservice and a distraction from the series in this reader’s opinion.  And the moonlighting-esqe will they/won’t they was part of the fun in the first couple of books-that story line was also wrecked in this book, there was WAY too much contemplation and missed signals and whatnot-its like JKR doesn’t know how to get there so she as a writer just made our poor characters dance and sing and never really put on a show.

At the end of the day this book got points just for being what it was but I hope Rowling/Galbraith is able to pull out the stops and bring it back around in the next book.  This one was a disappointment.

Rating:  (sadly) #5 Good Enough

NOTE:  Along with reading this latest installment I also took a look at the BBC's tv version of the books and I found that delightful!  My mom is coming for a while this spring and I'll watch it again with her (I think its on Hulu???  Could be Amazon, I don't remember.)  The reviews of the series were not all that high on it but I personally thought it was well done, entertaining and true to the books.  The above less than stellar review aside, I am really looking forward to the next installment in the tv series!!!