Light mystery. Perfect for a day of fluff reading.

This book was a freebie, which is something I’m always looking to snag. The description made it sound good, so I gave it a shot. It wasn’t terrible, but it also wasn’t great. Zoe and her husband Jack are divorced yet share a house. Odd, I’ll give you that; however, I think the writer used this as a plot devise to make things easier for Zoe to snoop around her ex’s part of the house instead of breaking and entering. Jack is presumed dead, but the police and FBI believe him to be a man on the run after his business partner, Cooper, is found murdered in their office. Now the divorced couple dives into a whodunit mystery.

My problem with this book is that Zoe is a little more than incapable of making good decisions, and so appears to be a dimwit who clearly couldn’t hold a regular job even if she really wanted one. Jack is made out to be a budding sleuth, and despite the fact that at the start of the book it’s explained that these two despise one another, continuously flirts with his ex-wife. I feel the number of stars I was going to give this book beginning to dwindle.

To top things off, it was all very predictable. I was never a very good chess player, but I was figuring out their next steps way ahead of the characters. The bad guys seemed to be ahead of Zoe and Jack, too, because they kept showing up in places that these two didn’t plan on being in until a few pages before they reached the next destination.

It was cute and fanciful. It would have been better had there been a little more proofreading for errors and editing to make it more interesting. It’s definitely family-friendly because it lacks any gruesome descriptions or curse words. If you want to get a book for a younger reader, this is it. Despite my unfavorable review, I would still listen to the rest of the series as an audiobook while I work for two reasons: (1) I hope it gets better and has some resolution to it, and (2) it’s fine to miss a few pages if I get distracted because the story can be picked right back up without having to rewind it.

Rating: 3 stars

Reviewer: Jules

Title: Elusive

Author: Sara Rosett

Release Date: September 3, 2013

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