Ami's Hoard

This is one Lanyon book that I have waited for awhile. But the release date was pushed several times, so I tried to tone down my expectation.

First chapter in and I was pretty excited. As I went along, I thought this had a VERY GOOD built-up on the mystery front. What can I say, I can be really demanding on body counts when it comes to story about serial killers. Heck, I don't even mind a mystery book without romance. Good mystery can sometimes trump romance. Maybe it's a left-over from my childhood reading experience, when I only consumed Agatha Christie's novels.

So yes, this had a very good mystery set-up: a 20-year-old buried skeleton, butchered body in an American museum, another girl with throat slashed... not to mentioned a serial-killer case that hasn't been caught running on the background.

It was promising!!

Until that LOUSY ending. Don't get me wrong, our men got their 'unsub', but the wrapping of this mystery was really sucky for me as a reader. I'm going to rant, thus MAJOR spoilers ... [

] Did Lanyon really want me to get a conclusion of my own, making up the plot as I went along??

I am SO NOT amused!!

If the mystery conclusion was 'sacrificed' for the sake of the romance, well, hell, it didn't really work out for me. The romance was lackluster at best -- maybe because I didn't feel the chemistry that well. Plus I couldn't warm up to Rob. I thought he was too laid-back and apathetic as a Deputy Sherrif. I mean, shouldn't he be more curious, more suspicious of things? THERE WERE MURDERS, MAN! I got irritated with Rob when he shot down possible reasons, just because... So yeah, I wasn't really sold on the romance, I was hoping for the mystery to save me.

And that Epilogue *face palm* It was like a rushed add-on because the story needed some sort of HFN. Really, I would be fine with a more tentative ending. If any of you read A.M. Riley's Son of a Gun (a GREAT story, by the way), it offered a hint of a promise that felt more realistic and natural to the relationship as a whole. The epilogue? Yeah, it could've just scraped off and made way for the mystery conclusion, in my humble opinion.

In the end, not exactly my favorite from Lanyon. Still gave it a 3-stars because the first 85% - 90% or so was good enough.

PS: I also notice a couple of errors, like missing word in a complete sentence, type of thing? Also a word "x miles", which I thought was weird. Maybe the X was supposed to be written as numbers??