Review: The weakest book of the series
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 05 12, 2014
I need to mention that the author provided me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.Sasha Jackson has a new client: a porn movie star. She asked Sasha to investigate a murder of her roommate and colleague Kitty Vixen: the police did not do much investigating as people of the victim's profession are way down on their list of priorities. Sasha starts her own investigation and soon she learns gruesome details about adult movie industry, drug and child abuse and more.This is fairly weak book in otherwise very good series. While it deals with such an important issue as porn star treatments by the movie studios, this issue comes out a little preachy. This would work in a documentary, but falls somewhat flat in a work of fiction.WARNING: some spoilers follow.The end was somewhat abrupt and left me completely clueless about the motive for the last murder. Why was it committed? The murderer was not a serial killer (but even these have some motives) and the victim had no information related to killer's identity. Surely the murder created a highly dramatic moment, but other than that it was completely pointless.My last complaint, and this one comes with a really big spoiler: in any recent TV show, in any recent movie, in any recent book the moment I see a stepfather is introduced, I think "child abuse" and I am always right. For some reason the people around the abuser have no idea about what is going on, the mother of the abused child in question being the last one to finally learn the truth. This plot device became so cliche, it is not about beating a dead horse anymore; it is way beyond that. The fact that the author decided to use this particular plot development is a weakness of the book.I was not very fond of Sasha's love triangle, but this is a minor complaint.Having said all this, I still need to make it clear that the book itself is not bad; it is just not up to the rest of the series.