Review: Day Shift

Day Shift by Charlaine Harris
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Day Shift is the second book in the Midnight, Texas trilogy, making for a more enjoyable book than the first. Despite being a more engaging tale than book one, this book still failed to deliver the amazing read I’d been hoping to receive.

I gave book one a three star rating, despite considering it to be a two-point-five star rating. Book two is a solid three star rating. I considered amending my rating of book one down to two stars, but in the end I opted to keep it at the rounded up rating. Therefore, whilst both books one and two received a three star rating from me, there was a difference in how much I enjoyed the stories.

The first book introduced us to our small town and the inhabitants, yet we didn’t really get to know them all that well. Book two works to amend that to some degree. More information is given about characters, along with more questions appearing. For a second book in a trilogy, it hits the right spot in that regard – you want answers but you do not want all of the answers.

However, whilst it was fun to get to know some of the characters better, I feel as though it wasn’t all the book could have been. There were many elements of book one that seemed to have been pushed aside completely and forgotten about, ignored to allow new elements to develop. I hate it when this kind of thing happens in a series. I understand that there are times where certain elements are more important, but I feel as though some of the big things from book one were completely ignored.

In addition, I felt as though the book failed to deliver the promised punch. As with book one, the mystery side of the story was overly obvious. In addition to being obvious, I feel as though it failed to deliver many of the important aspects of mystery story telling. You need build up and suspense, then a big bang when the resolution becomes clear. Things simply seemed to sort themselves out – handed to us on a silver platter once someone else had played about with them, a ‘here you go, here is something I made earlier, let me tell you about it without letting you experience all the hard work involved’.

Don’t get me wrong, it was an okay read. I certainly enjoyed it more than I enjoyed the first book, yet I really wasn’t crazy about it. Truthfully, I’m glad this is merely a trilogy and not a longer series.

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