ARGH! . . . As I've always written, I write these book reviews for me, not for the reader. I like to know what I've read so I can either go back and read it again, continue or discontinue the series, or avoid the author completely. At the moment I'm struggling with the fact that I can remember reading a particularly compelling thriller about the Middle East, but apparently I didn't think enough about it to actually write it down here. Nevertheless, I'm also in a bit of a quandary about this latest book I've finished, Tough Cookie by Diane Mott Davidson.

I started reading Davidson's series on cookie and sleuthing and wasn't too disappointed. Now, the mild enthusiasm has waned. It might take quite a bit of convincing for me to read another. Although I find her characters shallow, her excessive use of modifying adverbs maddening and silly and her descriptions bordering on insipid and confusing, I will say that her mysteries, the actual story, the plot is fun to watch come together. It's as if she sprinkles all her characters in her book like fish food in an aquarium and they all dance and float around higgelty-piggelty then at the last instant they all come together. Sadly that's the only positive aspect I could find.

Some of the passages I highlighted:

"Without my business, an enterprise I'd lovingly built up for almost a decade, I entered a spiritual fog as thick as the gray autumnal mist snaking between the Colorado mountains."

"To the east the sky was edged with pewter." - "She said without preamble."