Tuesday, February 19, 2013

The Dead Girls Detective Agency Review

Author: Suzy Cox
Title: The Dead Girls Detective Ageny
Published: 09/18/2012 Good Reads-
Pop quiz: What would you do if you had to solve your own murder to get anywhere in death?

Maybe if I hadn't slept through my alarm, slammed into Kristin--my high school's reigning mean

girl--or stepped in a puddle, destroying my mom's new suede DVF boots (which I borrowed without asking), I wouldn't have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I wouldn't have been pushed in front of that arriving train. But I did, and I was.


When I came to, I was informed by a group of girls that I'm dead. And that because I died under mysterious circumstances, I can't pass straight over to the Other Side. But at least I'm not alone. Meet the Dead Girls Detective Agency: Nancy, Lorna, and Tess--not to mention Edison, the really cute if slightly hostile dead boy. Apparently, the only way out of this limbo is to figure out who killed me, or I'll have to spend eternity playing Nancy Drew. Considering I was fairly invisible in life, who could hate me enough to want me dead? And what if my murderer is someone I never would have suspected?


Review:
This book wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, at all. When I first read the summary I got really excited, my all-time favorites are murder mysteries. The light hearted ones with witty comebacks, a sassy main character, some odd characters for you to choose a murderer out of, a nice, simple, funny, quick read. The Dead Girl’s Detective Agency is so far south of that.  And here’s why;

Charlotte was pushed under the F train on her way home from a perfectly normal day at school. She wakes up to the bespectacled face of Nancy at the Attesa, the hotel for teenage ghost downtown New York. In order for Charlotte to pass on through the Big Red Door, to who knows what eternity, she has to solve her murder and have her murderer admit to it. Helping her is the Dead Girls Detective Agency, as they call it, Tess, Lorna, and Nancy, all three ghosts who died before their time and are currently at the Attesa. There’s also Edison, although he plays a very important role in the book, I kinda felt like he was left out. In order to solve Charlotte’s case the girls take different approaches searching through her old life to get a few leads.  Which is mainly stalking her ex(would he be an ex if she died?) boyfriend.

Why I didn’t like this book, well there are many many many many many reasons why I didn’t like this book. First off, the characters all felt distant and out of reach, they were a bunch of kids who had their futures stolen from them and I had about zero sympathy.  I couldn’t connect with any of the characters, I mean it was a great idea of putting in all the different stereotypes. Charlotte was kinda the “too cool for school” type, Nancy is a giant nerd, Lorna is the fashion obsessed blond rich girl, Edison being the troubled loner, and Tess as total mean girl. As much as their friendship in the book flowed pretty smoothly, they really didn’t seem fully developed to me. Now like I said, most of the book is literally them stalking her ex-boyfriend David. Which isn’t very interesting because even though he’s also what I’d say is a main character in the book, he’s kinda blah.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen an author make a mistake of not wanting the answer to be obvious, so it’s pretty much impossible to assume. You can’t get into the book because the whole time they’re busy following dead leads up until what, the last three chapters? They finally put two and two together in the last 30 pages of the book and the rest of that was walking around in circles. It took me a long time to read this book, mostly because I didn’t want to pick it back up again. I knew I was headed for text book level interest, and I wasn’t about to waste time on that. I keep thinking about all the things that could’ve been included to have made this a really intense heavy read. How it could’ve been a book that made you sit and think for a bit, all the material was really there, it was just presented in the wrong way.

The Dead Girls Detective Agency sadly scores a 2 for me.

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