TL;DR: A decent mystery in a cozy setting, Real Murders by Charlaine Harris was good, but the protagonist is stiff and lacking in character.
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐1/2
Aurora Teagarden is the town librarian who meets every Friday night with a group of people to discuss real murders. She enjoys the discussions and is getting ready to present when she stumbles across the body of one of the members. What follows is a lot of murders that are eerily similar to cases the Real Murders club have studied.
This series is one that many mystery lovers recommend. I also enjoyed the few Sookie Stakehouse books that Charlaine Harris has also written, so I thought I’d give it a go. I found the main character boring, stiff, and not likeable, but the murder was well-written and I didn’t guess the killers. For all that and more, I give it 3.5 stars.
The Plot
Aurora Teagarden attends her weekly Friday night Real Murders club with other members of the small town where she lives. She’s all set to present a real murder to the group when she stumbles upon the body of one of the group members in the kitchen.
What follows are more senseless murders, all looking very much like cases the group has studied. As the bodies pile up and members of the group find evidence linked to them also linked to the murders, Aurora is hot on the trail of the murder. Will she figure it out before anyone else dies?
What I liked & liked less
I found the murder mystery part of the book well-written and hard to figure out on my own. I liked that there weren’t massive pointers to the killer, which is the only good thing I can say about this book.
I was not a fan of the main character, Aurora Teagarden. She is stiff and has little to no personality. She also attracts two suitors, one who is new and one who isn’t new, who suddenly find her attractive because she found a body. It didn’t feel like enough of a reason to find her attractive, especially since one of them she’s known for at least a year.
The cast of characters is large and we get a sense for some of them, although Aurora isn’t friendly with most of them, which I found odd. She grew up in this town and only has two friends, one who doesn’t live there anymore (and apparently moved to allow Roe to “shine”) and another friend who is glamorous and can get any guy she wants. This to me is part of the problem.
The author set up the character to be the center of two men fighting over her, but one of her friends had to leave town to make it possible and the other gives Roe her cast off (the new writer in town). Is she that unattractive that no one else would want to date her? Or is it her personality? Either way, I found the romance in the book to be as stiff as Aurora’s character and wasn’t sure what either of the two men found attractive about her.
The murders are more gruesome than you’d expect for a cozy mystery series, but perhaps the author doesn’t consider them to be in that vein. The motivations for the killer is also weak and also convenient for the plot. All in all, I didn’t mind the book, but I don’t know that I’ll read the next one.
To Sum Up (Too Late!)
It’s hard for me to recommend this book because the main character is bland, has zero growth, and is in the middle of a three way romance that seems forced. However, the writing is well done and the mystery kept me guessing. For all that and more, I give Real Murders by Charlaine Harris 3.5 stars.
About the Author
Charlaine Harris has been a published novelist for over thirty-five years. A native of the Mississippi Delta, she grew up in the middle of a cotton field. Charlaine lives in Texas now, and all of her children and grandchildren are within easy driving distance.
Though her early output consisted largely of ghost stories, by the time she hit college (Rhodes, in Memphis) Charlaine was writing poetry and plays. After holding down some low-level jobs, her husband Hal gave her the opportunity to stay home and write. The resulting two stand-alones were published by Houghton Mifflin. After a child-producing sabbatical, Charlaine latched on to the trend of series, and soon had her own traditional mystery books about a Georgia librarian, Aurora Teagarden. Her first Teagarden, Real Murders, garnered an Agatha nomination.
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