Review of ‘The last place you look’ by Kristen Lepionka
For my last book of the year, I was looking for a good mystery book to read. This series has been on my radar for a while and I have been itching more recently to read this. I’m glad I picked this because I really enjoyed it. It was the kind of book I could not stop reading. Thank goodness I had no work today or I would have been walking around like a zombie since I easily picked reading this rather than sleeping. This is actually a debut for Lepionka which is even more impressive to me. She already writes like a seasoned author so it gives me high hope for the rest of the series.
I have loved mysteries since my Nancy Drew childhood days but my absolute favorite type of mysteries usually stars a hard-boiled and flawed private investigator. I like that PI’s can do the work cops can’t or won’t do and that they can get pretty close to crossing over the line since it ends up making for a more interesting story in my opinion. Luckily for me, Roxane Weary fits those points perfectly. She’s is a bit of a mess. She’s not quite at Micky Knight’s (J.M. Redmann) level but she has more issues than an early Kinsey Millhone (Sue Grafton) did. Roxane drinks too much, she has trouble letting people close and she has very complicated family relationships, but she has a detective’s gut instinct and deep down she really cares about people. She was the kind of flawed character that I find really easy to like.
Since I mostly read/review lesfic I do want to say this doesn’t belong in that category. However, this book does get the LGBTQ tag. Roxane is bisexual and has relationships with both men and women. Both the m/f and wlw sex scenes where fade to black. I was not personally big on either character for Roxanne so I’m keeping my fingers crossed she will discover someone new in book 2.
When it came to the actual mystery, I was impressed. I had a guess of who the bad guy/girl was but I was wrong and had instead picked up on a red herring Lepionka put out. I normally have good luck guessing the criminal so I’m always happy when a mystery author can sneak one by me. While the book’s pace was a little slower at times, the story gradually kept ramping up and up. As a reader you started worrying about time, knowing the mystery needed to be solved soon. For those reasons, it added a bit of this slightly frantic but exciting feeling to the book. It got your heart pumping a bit as the excitement kept building up to a satisfying story climax that all good mystery books should have.
If you are a mystery fan this is an easy book to recommend. It is really well done for a debut and just well done, period. Books two and three are already out with book four coming out this year. I’m really glad to know I have more of the series to read and I’m looking forward to it. I’m ready for more Roxane. 4.50 Stars.
