Title: Sleep Like a Baby
Series: Aurora Teagarden, #10
Author: Charlaine Harris
Pages: 288
Genre: Cozy Mystery, Mystery, Crime
Story Perspective: First-Person
Themes: Family, New Parent, Newborn care, Honesty
Publication Date: September 26th 2017
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Thank you to the NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for giving me the opportunity to read and review Sleep Like a Baby.
Aurora and Robin are first-time parents to little Sophie. While Robin is away, Aurora becomes ill and is helped by a nurse, Virginia. However, in one night not only does Virginia go missing, a woman ends up dead in the Teagarden’s backyard. Will they find Virginia? More importantly, who killed the woman in their backyard and why was she there?
This is a book that I was given the opportunity to read and review by NetGalley quite some time ago. I had started reading it, but then stopped as life became more busy. As I picked it up again, my interest was piqued because the protagonist, Aurora (Roe) was a first-time mother and I am about to be a first-time mother.
It’s interesting because I read almost all of the Sookie Stackhouse series by this author, twice in fact, years and years ago. It was a series that I enjoyed at the time. However, when I tried to pick it up again as a summertime re-read recently, I could only make it to a third of the first book before quitting. It’s funny how book interests change. Because of this, I was a bit worried of reading another one of Charlaine Harris’ books, but decided to give this one a try.
Unfortunately, this book was not for me…
Though this is the tenth book in the Aurora Teagarden series, I don’t feel readers need to read the first nine books in order to understand what is happening. This is a good aspect of the book and helped me to understand the main characters and the plot.
One of my least favorite aspects of the book, though, was the writing. Though there was a murder and a missing person, there was zero suspense. I didn’t feel excited or really wanted to continue reading through most of the book. At first, I didn’t understand why was the book written this way, but then I realized it was a cozy mystery…cozy mysteries are not for me. I found this out when I read a few Agatha Christie books…Though this was probably own fault when I requested this book at the time since the cover clearly looks like a cozy mystery.
Along with the zero-suspense plot, the other aspect of the writing that I did not enjoy was how mundane every single scene was explained. For example, there were chapters and chapters of how Aurora was sick with the flu, and how challenging that is with a baby. Yes, I can imagine that would be challenging, but I really don’t need to read the same plot point over and over again. This is especially true when it doesn’t move the plot along. This happened in more than one occasion, which was a bit frustrating. I also found the writing to be “tell, not show”. Again, this is something that I don’t enjoy. I would rather be shown what the characters are feeling and experiencing rather than just telling me.
The ending…again, it’s a cozy mystery, so the ending was just ridiculous and did not satisfy me at all.
Overall, though I’m sure there are many out there who would enjoy this type of story, it is not for me. Therefore, I do not plan on reading more of this author’s books, unfortunately.
