The Burnt

In general, I do think these are getting better. I still feel weird with how much is from alternative POVs, especially the POV of a suspect. For a mystery, that’s odd, and needs to be written very carefully for it to seem natural and not give anything away. I would honestly feel better if anything that came out in those scenes was explained in interviews or found by one of the detectives in another way.
The mystery in the story kept me guessing, but I’m (still) not a regular mystery reader, just reading some mystery series that are sort of in the MM romance genre. For that, I’ll stick with book 2, because this one, Charlie and Declan are already together, and mostly just working out the specifics of the relationship and working show more together. It’s nice to see Charlie taking more initiative and becoming more independent as an investigator. As for the relationship, there wasn’t much explicit sex in this book, and that strikes me as odd. Either have more explicit sex than one half-hearted scene, or leave it out entirely so we can say there’s nothing in there. It’s strange at the level it’s at.
All in all, I did like this one. I liked the way the mystery played out, and I liked the way the relationship progressed. The rest is just nitpicking. show less