Krysten’s Review

Come Die With Me is a fun, quick read, clearly inspired by Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum Series. Knight’s writing style is engaging, and the story is sprinkled with some creative phrases, humorous situations, and snappy one-liners that made me giggle. I also enjoyed the setting of Las Vegas and felt like it was pretty well portrayed.

However, the characters and their relationships are underdeveloped and need a bit of work. To me, it felt like Knight modeled them after Evanovich’s already-established characters and relied too heavily on the obvious similarities to evoke a connection with the reader, rather than creating something new. As a result, there are a lot of steps skipped in between their introduction (both to the reader and between the other characters), and the eventual familiarity they have. In other words, their relationships were rushed.

The mystery aspect felt a bit amateur to me. Roxy ran into very little opposition as she tracked down leads and interviewed witnesses/suspects; most were more than happy to talk to her. For someone who is a complete beginner, she seemed to know exactly what she was doing and easily picked up on clues. That said, the climax was exciting, even though I did have a strong suspicion of who the murderer was (and ended up being correct).

The book could have used another proofreading/editing pass, as I found a number of errors, and some of the exposition could be tightened up. There were some inconsistencies I picked up on that indicated the author made some changes along the way but missed some of the subsequent references. Quite a few grammatical errors as well. I also found the frequent fragment sentences to be annoying. They were clearly intentional (part of the author’s writing style), but given the sheer volume of them, they lost some of their effect.

All in all, a decent start to what I assume will be an ongoing series. I look forward to watching the author’s style and storytelling skills develop as the series continues!