Milda Harris

Doppelganger: an apparition or double of a living person.

Citrus Leahy is having a really bad day. She's late to school, but that's not the really bad part of her day. When she goes to class she looks in and sees that she is already there! And she's not the only one who has a body double - her crush, Aedan, also has one. What's going on? That's what Citrus intends to find out.

I loved the premise of this book, and the book lived up to my expectations for the most part. Citrus's mental monologues are a bit annoying, but if you can get past that, you will really enjoy this book. It does end with a cliffhanger, but it is a good introduction to the series. I look forward to reading book #2.

I recommend this book to my fellow fantasy lovers out there.

4/5 stars.

I received a copy of this book free of charge in exchange for my honest opinion.… (more)

I'll admit to an obvious bias. The entire "quirky female teenager with out-of-place hobby falls and manages to hook guy supposedly out of reach who, too, has a quirky out-of-place hobby" (am I losing you?) trope? Love it. This is probably why the main issue many seem to have with the book - the voice of our female protagonist - doesn't seem to affect me. She should be bouncy, all-over-the-place. That's who she is. Frankly, I kind of loved it. When our protag was excited, I was excited. When she was sad, I felt like the older sister who had to see her through to the end.

Unfortunately, even with the odds skewed in its favor on my part, this book had just a few too many nails in its coffin.

Issue one is not the most obvious. The pacing in this book takes a sudden turn from jog to full-on leap, especially at the very end. For the most part, Harris knew how to keep the story moving. We never lingered too long on a particular issue before it was either solved, resigned, or shown from a different perspective. This was a good thing - there weren't pages worth of dialogue bemoaning the main character's lack of friends, for example, which tends to be a persistent problem with this type of literature. While I won't spoil the end of the novel, I will say that it comes from absolutely nowhere. The ebook itself isn't that long, so I suppose that this was to be expected, but the fact that the mystery revealed itself instead of the characters solving it themselves felt a little cheap and very, very rushed. Especially for a book priding itself on having a crime-solving, Nancy Drew feel. Didn't Nancy, you know, actually manage to figure out the majority of the case before her final confrontation with the "villain"? There's none of that here; the crime pertaining to the mystery of the dead girls is basically just a network of loose information none of the main characters seem to figure out.

Problem two is one that crime novels in general tend to have. The idiocy of the police is astounding. Again, no spoilers, but there's just too many coincidences obvious for the police to not be a bigger part of the overall story. It kind of stunk to see them relegated to the background, pretty much just there to stop our "meddling kids". There was a lot of potential for some great interaction between these two forces. Reading the synopses of other books in this series, it appears that this is no longer a problem, so that's at least good.

Problem three, the final one, is the persistent feeling of a "second book syndrome". As in, this book just feels like a massive lead-up to the second one in the series, which will far outshine it. Characters have to be introduced, backstories have to be established, quirks have to be polished. The pacing I mentioned before makes all of this bustle less pronounced, but it doesn't change the fact that it's bustle. Compounded to the fact that the story itself is so short, you walk away with the feeling that "Adventures in Funeral Crashing" was supposed to be just a massive launching pad for the series in general, not its own story. On the one hand, Harris did a great job with this, because, for all its flaws, I certainly do want to pick up this series. But on the other, it's quite a shame.

Is it worth getting? Considering that it's free, I would give a definite "yes". If you end up not liking it, you won't have wasted much time with it, considering that it clocks in at one hundred something pages (a lot of the end is just a preview for the next book, pushing it to two hundred ten pages). And if you're like me, and see the seed of something here, you might consider picking up the sequel.… (more)

Kait Lenox is back! She is still visiting funeral homes and attending funerals because she likes the stories and remembrances that she sees and hears exchanged. She is still visiting her Mom’s plot in the cemetery visiting and continuing her conversations with her Mom. And, she is now dating a HOT boy in her high-school although before Ethan everyone had labeled her weird! And, she is still investigating murder …

After many years (eight) I finally found this book 2 of the series for free on Amazon and scooped it up immediately. I enjoyed the light-hearted teenage look at life and death, dating and chick-lit. It would recommend it to anyone of any age.… (more)