I’m voraciously going through the Southern Vampire Mysteries series, if you can’t tell by now. This weekend, I finished Club Dead (Southern Vampire Mysteries, Book 3)
This third book seems more like a soap opera than a mystery novel. Even though the mystery is still there, it’s clear that the focus of the book are character interactions and reactions to what happens. I liked the book, but I’d rank this as the weakest one so far from the series.
After hearing Trevor Corson speak on the radio about sushi, I picked up his book because I wanted to learn more about one of my favorite foods. The Zen of Fish follows a new student through a sushi course at the California Sushi Academy. Mixed in with the story of the student and her classmates are historical facts and other information about things related to sushi such as fish, knives, rice, and etiquette.
While I was reading the book, I couldn’t help feeling annoyed by the passages about Kate, the student going through the school. She’s inept, clumsy, ditzy, and just not that interesting. I was more interested in the actual tidbits of information about sushi than Kate’s classes.
I would have rated this book higher if it only contained the informational passages about the Japanese cuisine. Those parts were interesting and worth reading for anyone who likes sushi, but the other parts felt like a waste of time. Corson might have been trying to get readers to relate to Kate, but he would have been more successful if he had chosen a stronger student from the class to follow.