Locus Amoenus: All By My Shelf

I thought this second installment in the series would be better than the first, but it was a bit of a letdown.

The setting (the Asylum, a long-abandoned prison for the criminally insane) was perfect for the story the author set out to tell, but as with the first book in the series, the spooky supernatural elements soon gave way to a thriller about a serial killer. By the time the ghostly happenings reappeared in the last couple of chapters, they were no longer interesting and seemed to have been shoehorned into the serial killer plot. Nothing was explained, and we were supposed to just accept what was happening. I did, however, like a certain big twist at the end, which I didn't see coming; but it had nothing to do with the ghost plot. There was also a halfhearted hidden treasure plot that went nowhere.

My other big problem was the main character, Landry Drake. He was truly of the TSTL (too stupid to live) variety; although I guess he's the kind of idiot that every horror story needs. He starts out as a rookie deputy investigating cold cases in his own time, and continues as a journalist of sorts. Throughout the story, he makes some truly dumb decisions, and his character is never fully developed. He'll be making another appearance in the next book, and I hope he's learned a bit by then.

Finally, there are the same writing issues as in the previous book. The ever-changing POVs and time jumps broke the flow for me in most cases. And there's a lot more telling than showing; entire conversations are described instead of presented as dialogue.

It was a page-turner, though. Not because I was wondering what would happen (the first chapter starts with the aftermath, and goes back from there), but how we would get there.

And now, on to the third book, which is the one I got through NetGalley.