Books Can Be Deceiving

Books Can Be Deceiving by Jenn McKinlay
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Lindsay Norris is the director of a small town public library. Her best friend Beth is the children's librarian. Beth has spent the past five years dating a famous picture book author/illustrator who is a total jerk, and she breaks up with him the night before discovering he has plagiarized her work on a picture book she wrote and would like to get published. When she and Lindsay go to confront him, they discover he has already had a fatal confrontation with someone else, but the town's police chief is convinced he need look no further than the angry ex-girlfriend to close this murder case. Lindsay refuses to let her best friend be railroaded and sets out to solve the crime herself.

My favorite thing about this book were the snippets of library life--very very brief mentions of quirky questions and patrons. As a reference librarian, I can totally identify with those. Unfortunately, the characters and much of the story felt pretty one-dimensional and formulaic. It wasn't a terrible book. I just really wanted to like it more than I did, and I was hampered by the stereotypical characterizations and idiotic actions of the narrator, especially by the end of the novel. I mean, seriously, someone breaks into your apartment in the middle of the night, and once you chase the person out, you don't pick up the phone and call the detective?! Yeah, I can see not calling the idiotic chief of police, but to not pull out the intelligent detective's business card, even the next morning?? Oy.

I'm also confused by something that happened at the crucial climactic moment, but as talking about it would be even more spoiler-ish than my previous complaint, I will just rant to my mom, who read the book before she gave it to me. (Standard practice in our family.)

For readers' advisors: story doorway. No sex, on-screen violence, or swearing.

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