I’m going to just start by saying don’t bother with this book. There’s too much wrong with it to be forgiven. So, here’s my Goodreads review:
A Vision of Murder by Victoria Laurie
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
I don’t usually review books I give low stars to. It kind of doesn’t feel worth my time. But this had some seriously terrible and offensive things going on, so I’m going to write about it.
First the treatment of the MC’s boyfriend’s college buddy. They visit him, and as they’re heading back to the car she starts teasing her boyfriend about his friend and what good taste he has and how he likes show tunes. And then she tells the boyfriend that his friend is gay and has a crush on him, and as backup for this they talk about how the friend did decorate the boyfriend’s house for him. This scene pulled out just about every cliche in the book.
Then let’s talk about the boyfriend. He’s supposed to be a good guy apparently. But the two characters drop into random, extremely childish fights for no real reason other than the story must have needed some drama at those points. But that’s not the worst of it. Frequently the boyfriend gets angry because the MC does things he told her not to. Like he has any right to tell her what to do! And at one of those times, when she went out when he told her not to because it wasn’t safe, he took her car keys. Including going into her purse to take her spare set. So that she couldn’t leave his house (where she was staying to nurse him from a bullet wound). So, controlling and abusive and really just horrible. This stuff is NOT a show of how much someone cares about someone else.
It took me this long to write this up because I was so angry about this horrible jerk that I couldn’t write about it without just screaming on the page. I’m really disappointed in this story because I really like the premise of the series. But I’m tired of the childish, ridiculous, and outright harmful behavior of these characters (I didn’t even talk about the MC’s sister and her completely outrageous and unreasonable behavior!). This is definitely not for me.