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Book Review of Real Murders (Aurora Teagarden, Bk 1)

Real Murders (Aurora Teagarden, Bk 1)


I'll skip a recap of the book's events and say simply that this was a great down-to-earth murder mystery. There was a real sense of the horror the characters felt as their friends and neighbors were being slaughtered around them in awful ways. There was not an incredible amount of gory description; just enough to make your imagination fill in the worst details. I liked Aurora "Roe" Teagarden and found her endearingly normal and relatable: just a young, small-town librarian who's mostly happy with her "boring," normal life - especially when two very different men start showing clear interest in her. As I've come to expect from Charlaine Harris, the writing was descriptive but not overdone, and it carried me through the book at a good pace. The mystery remained a mystery for me up to the very end; I got suspicious partway through, but then my attention was cleverly diverted to other suspects. I love a mystery that's so tricky I may not solve it until the characters do. Some readers may miss the glamor of the Southern Vampire series, but to each their own. I'll be ordering the next book in this series ASAP!