Reads Like Murder in Honolulu

Dream Books LLC, June 18, 2009
eBook, 491 Pages
ISBN: 978-1-61584-150-9
Adult
Ordering Information:
Amazon.com | Dream Books LLC Store

The more one reads about the magic of Hawaii, the more you could fall in love with the Pacific Islands state. Reads Like Murder in Honolulu by Georgina Donovan transports the reader to where a myth meets mystery.

The story begins with a lovely bookstore owner named Hayley Wyndham. She finds herself hypnotized in a routine bike ride when a sudden hit-and-run jars her in to a mystery right off the pages of her beloved books. The day is made worse by a break in of her business. However, all is left in the capable hands of the San Diego police as she answers the call of a fellow book lover. Although this visit would be anything but normal. With a hunky Hawaiian cop, Keoni Chase, along for the ride, the two sail down a rabbit hole full of kidnappings, murders, myths and even a little romance. Will they solve the mystery of Mokuaina Pu'uhonua?

Upon reading this book, I often had the "Why did you do that?" feeling. For example, Hayley finds a book, ship logs, in her friend Kana's apartment. She believes this book is a part of the case but yet didn't take it to some secret location. Just left if for some intruder to return and find it, particularly the one who already tried to break in. Would someone who reads mystery novels on a regular basis do that? Leave a key piece of evidence for the bad guys to find? Although there wasn't many clues to allow a reader to lean in one or more characters direction. A lot of sneaking and following but not much to direct the reader until closer to the end. In certain scenes it comes off as if the civilian was doing more of the heavy lifting than the handsome lieutenant. The same lieutenant in which she gets "close" to but yet never fully explores the relationship. That is until the very end. I think if you're going to tease the reader with some romance, there should be actual romance.

However, the plot holes and on occasion, redundant descriptions don't compare to all of the typographical and grammatical mistakes: missing commas and words, misspellings, quotation marks and the abundance of dashes throughout. Supposedly, this novel was re-released to fix these errors. Either I wasn't given one of the revised copies or this hasn't taken place yet. The pacing tends to slow to a crawl in certain scenes. Complex words tend to appear out of no where like the author wore out her thesaurus. The chapter lengths are a bit wonky (some are a few pages while others are over a hundred). The list goes on. I did enjoy the story line. Although, I think if Ms. Donovan gave this novel an overhaul, if it hasn't been done yet, Reads Like Murder in Honolulu has the potential to be an excellent read.

Ghostly Rating:

Giveaway : I have three digital copies of this book to giveaway. This will be a first-come-first-serve type of thing. A copy of Reads Like Murder in Honolulu will be given to the first three people who send me an email request to paranormal_stories2004(at)yahoo.com.