[I received an electronic review copy of this book from Netgalley and Midnight Ink in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.]
Summary
Charlee has traveled to Portland, Oregon to speak at the Stumptown Writer’s Conference run by her friend Viv. But when Viv shows up at the airport to get Charlee, she announces her daughter Hanna has been kidnapped.
Viv says she can’t call the police or Hanna will be killed. And she refuses to cancel the conference. She wants Charlee to help her save Hanna. But Charlee knows she’d be way out of her league on that. So Viv drops Charlee at the conference hotel where Charlee says she’ll help with the conference. Then Viv races off, leaving Charlee to muddle through on her own because, “oh, by the way,” all the volunteers have food poisoning.
Food poisoning isn’t the only issue with the conference. The hotel is doubled booked with a dog show. The registration site is glitching and over charging people thousands of dollars. Charlee’s “tech support” is a guy who knows how to use a spreadsheet and is proud of his 12 friends on Facebook. The three volunteers she has seem unfamiliar with what might need to be finished to kick off the conference. Oh – and the hotel chef has been fired.
Charlee has her hands full with the conference itself, but she can’t help picking up clues about what might have happened to Hanna. Soon, she agrees to help Viv find her daughter. But the clues won’t be easy to sift through.
Review
I have mixed feelings on this one. On the positive side, I loved the writer’s conference pieces. Charlee gets thrown into some new territory due to the countless disasters with the conference. I loved how she handled them. And I really like Charlee as a protagonist. I’ve read both books in this series so far, and she’s great. I enjoy her voice and her general attitude toward the various situations she finds herself in.
The disasters at the writer’s conference were pushing the boundaries of reasonable for me. It felt like too much – I didn’t even list them all in my summary. I had a hard time believing that Viv would dump everything on a conference guest knowing ALL of her usual volunteers were sick, and then disappear. It feels more likely that she would show up but be distracted. Maybe throw herself into conference things and become a drill sergeant and at other times be in a distracted stupor. There were ways to have her there and have the kidnapping impact her. Her total disappearance felt odd to me. I had a similar feeling – it was all TOO much – in the first book. This may just be the author’s personal style – pile on the problems to the point of overwhelm.
The mystery seemed to be whether there even was a mystery for most of the book. Was Hanna really kidnapped or was she hiding or in rehab or trying to fleece her mom for money? And at times, Charlee seemed to forget herself and her uncertainty and lack of solid evidence. Her behavior in those moments undercut some of the strengths I like about the character.
I will probably stick with the series to see how the style continues to develop with a third book.