As much as I enjoy Chandler's books one inevitable thing that happens around 2 days after I finish one is that it all gets blended into a mush with her other stories. Don't get me wrong: each story is unique and enjoyable in its own way, just for some reason (possibly the ambiguous and almost identical ominous titles) they get thrown into the Elizabeth Chandler junk drawer in my imagination. Therefore, I must write about the stories in Dark Secrets 2 before I forget them.
No Time to Die follows Jenny who is determined to find her sister's killer. Jenny comes from a theatrical family where she is the only one not interested in performing. After her sister is killed by a serial killer while in drama camp Jenny is convinced that the police are wrong and that the murderer was someone her sister knew. So she goes and meets a bunch of messed up drama types, many of whom fall in love with her. There's Brian, the older guy who works at the camp, Mike who was Liza's secret boyfriend, and Paul, Liza's stalker. (I was going to use the word "creepy" before "stalker" but then I realized that there are no other types of stalkers.)
The Deep End of Fear had that unfortunate quality of feeling like it was never ending. Sometimes that lengthens a book's awesomeness but when it's a mystery which you know is going to get solved in the last chapter (like this one) you kind of want it to end soon.
The Deep End is about Kate who returns to this manor where her parents worked when she was a kid. Her family left suddenly shortly after Kate's best friend, Ashley, died in what was supposedly an accident. Now, Kate is working there as a nanny and trying to solve the mysteries surrounding Ashley's death while keeping her charge, Patrick, safe from his many relatives who are out to get him. There's also a hot hockey player wandering around but my theory is that he's only there as a love interest and not to have any other contribution to the plot.
All of Elizabeth Chandler's books have spooky semi-ambiguous titles that in my head make them nearly indistinguishable. However, while reading these two, I realized the titles are actually puns. I'm very proud of myself because my ditzy side actually lost for once! No Time To Die refers to the face of Liza's watch being broken when they found her body because that was the serial killer's signature, and The Deep End of Fear has to do with Ashley dying by falling into a not so frozen pond. So now you know that the titles aren't completely random phrases taken out of a ghost-story-writer thesaurus.
4.3 stars. I have a thing against mysteries which doesn't let me go higher. There's also the fact that these two seemed almost identical to each other and almost all of Elizabeth Chandler's other books.
No comments:
Post a Comment