Murder, Dinosaurs, Dragons, Oh My!

Last year I set and made my goal of reading 50 books in 2015, instead of increasing my goal this year I figured what with being a full-time university student, part-time book seller, part-time stay at home wife and full-time dog mama to the neediest rescue mutt on the planet, that 50 books is still an admirable goal for me for 2016. With that being said you may notice in upcoming reviews that books are numbered, that's just me keeping track of how many books I have read so far this year. So let the reviews roll on!

#1 Beastly Bones: A Jackaby Novel by William Ritter

Genre: Young Adult meets historical science fiction
Rating: 4/5

This is the second Jackaby novel by William Ritter; I read Jackaby last year and if we are being completely honest I only bought it for two reasons: 1. It had a pretty cover. 2. It was described as being Sherlock Holmes meets Doctor Who. 

A quick word about the first book before I delve into the second book; the first books felt like a pastiche of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's work with a bit of blood sucking and shape-shifting monsters stirred into the mix, it wasn't exactly what I would call an original piece of fiction. That being said, I did quite enjoy the book. It was an easy read with an admirable female protagonist, Miss Abigail Rook (who's Jackaby's equivalent of Watson), and thoroughly entertaining if not a bit unoriginal.

Now I enjoyed the first book enough that I figured I would give the second book a go when I saw it had recently come out. The second book finds Jackaby and Miss Rook embarking on an adventure to investigate a murder in a nearby small town, a small town that also happens to be the location of a very bizarre recent discovery, what appears to be dinosaur bones. We see some familiar faces from the first book: Jenny Cavanaugh- the beautiful spirit who lingers in the house that Jackaby and miss Rook now inhabit, Dougla - Jackaby's former assistant who now resides in the pond on the third floor of the house after a tragic case takes a turn and leaves him stuck as a mallard, and Charlie- the gentleman police officer who had to flee Newfiddleham after Jackaby's last case exposed a peculiar family secret.

I found this book to be more original than the first instalment, with Ritter's imagination for fantastic creatures even more on point than last time but it was a bit of a slower read. I enjoyed that he still played up the romantic aspect between Abigail and Charlie without ever turning this book into a romance, merely hinting at it from the sidelines. I do hope he continues the series with a third book, one that is hopefully a bit more fast-paced than this particular one.