#FridayFiveChallenge ~ Ghostly Interests: Vol 1 (A Harper Harlow Mystery) Buy or Pass @rosieamber1

Rosie Amber’s Friday Five Challenge, involves taking only five minutes to choose a book cover which appeals instantly. So take a few minutes, grab yourself a coffee…..and have a browse.

In today’s online shopping age, readers often base their buying decisions from small postage stamp size book covers (Thumb-nails), a quick glance at the book description and the review. How much time do they really spend making that buying decision?

AUTHORS – You often only have seconds to get a reader to buy your book, is your book cover and book bio up to it?

Rosie’s Friday Five Challenge is this….. IN ONLY FIVE MINUTES….

1) Go to any online book supplier,

2) Randomly choose a category,

3) Speed through the book covers, choose one which has instantly appealed to your eye,

4) Read the book Bio/ Description for this book, and any other details.

5) If there are reviews, check out a couple,

6) Make an instant decision, would you BUY or PASS?

Since we’re still in the middle of refurbishing the house and have no working kitchen at the moment, I put ‘kitchen’ in the search.  Loads of pages of cookery books, which I expected, and then this popped up….

It’s the first in the Kitchen Witch series and looks quite similar to Shelley’s choice for last week’s challenge and so as time was running on I looked at Amazon’s recommendations for me. And yes, I found another book with a paranormal theme.

The blurb reads

Harper Harlow lives in a world of ghosts. She sees them. She talks to them. She investigates them. She sends them on their merry way. She’s not embarrassed by her abilities, and she’s not afraid to be who she is. She’s also not looking for a relationship. Enter Jared Monroe, a smooth-talking police detective who sees things in black and white and ignores any shades of gray. He doesn’t believe in ghosts, and while he’s intrigued by the feisty blonde ghost detective, he’s not interested in the paranormal. When twenty-one-year-old Annie Dresden’s body washes up on the beach of Whisper Cove, Harper and Jared collide. Sparks may be flying, but so is confusion and mistrust. Harper calls on her loyal band of ghost hunters to solve the crime, and Jared relies on his training to tackle the same problem. It doesn’t matter what approach they take because all paths are destined to intersect. Can Harper and Jared learn to work together? And, more importantly, can new ghosts let go of the past and give in to an obscure future? It’s anyone’s guess when big personalities go to war and find they might have more in common than they think.

The cover obviously reflects the content of the story and gives the impression of a fun story. The kindle price is £1.49/$0.99. There are just three reviews on Amazon UK – two at 4* and one at 2* which isn’t very encouraging. On Amazon US there are 97 with an average of 4.4* and sixty-four percent are 5* reviews with twenty-one percent in the lower three ratings.

This is a three star from an Amazon US reviewer…this was a good book. Not a great book, but also not a horrible book. But had both first and second not been on Kindle unlimited I probably would have stopped right here. The story is better than the writing. I think this is where the author filed me. You do not need to use ” (insert characters name here) deadpanned” a bazillion times in the same story. I get sarcasm, most people do. I do not need it pointed out ever single instance. And for the author to continue to do that made me feel like I was being written down too, like the author felt I was too stupid to be reading their book. Also the other thing that stripped my nerves while reading was the exasperatingly over used start to a sentence that went like this “I…….insert actual sentence here” especially since more often than not that I…. had absolutely no place in the sentence.

These points are mentioned in more than one review in the lower ratings, with ‘cute’ and ‘nothing to write home about’ and similar comments. The mystery seems predictable and even a four star reviewer said she had no problem in putting the book down to do other things. With my increasing to be read list taking on a life of it’s own, a book has to really grab my interest for it to be added to the pile.

So will I BUY or PASS? It’s a PASS for me this week.

More Friday Five Challenge Choices

Shelley found a YA fantasy

Rosie went for a thriller

Liz chose a book of contemporary short stories.

Barb and guest poster, Shelley are cruising the Med