One of my favorite sayings--and that I rarely get to use--is that someone is "too clever by half." It's so snarky and such a backhanded little insult that I love it! But it's hard to use in everyday conversation. So I was sort of delighted to be able to apply that phrase to this shitty book. (I will tweak the definition a little though and say that the author is too confident in her wit [as opposed to intelligence] as to be annoying).First, I think footnotes in fiction are ridiculous. They are needed in scholarly books to cite sources and I get that. But when you use them in fiction writing, you are just trying to be cute. And you aren't. You aren't cute and you aren't clever and you are an idiot. Next, everyone in the family speaks the same way. The mom talks like the kids, the kids talk like the parents...it's like she had one character and just added a few things but--oh wait. Figure it out because I'm just not in the mood to talk about it. (See what I did there? The author pulled shit like that throughout and it was neither funny nor cute nor adorable).So yes, the whole "talking to the reader" and using her shitty footnotes to tell you to read her other books was not endearing to me.And what pisses me off is that I *wanted* to like this book! What a cute idea! But it was *too* cutesie...and the too cute cherry on this turd sundae was the 85 year old guy in Florida and the stupid phone conversations that were written out like a play. So why did I give it two stars instead of one? Because again the premise is sweet. I like the idea of families working together and female private investigators and reformed "wild children". Just too bad that this was just too clever by half. - Mystery Tour 2013 -I'm still loving the Spellman series. :) So weird and unique. I liked the first 2 in the series the best, though I can't say why that is. Definitely the most fun mysteries I've read.Fun + smart + bay area + unlike any other mystery novels.Tips: Read these books in order, and read them in paper form, not on an ereader. There's at least a hundred footnotes in each book.
Do You like book Les Spellman Contre-attaquent (2012)?
Izzy Spellman and her family's antics jsut get even funnier the more i read about them.
—amoali
