121) The Girl On Legare Street by Karen White

The Blurb :

Melanie has grown accustomed to renovating old houses, but she never imagined she'd have to renovate her own life to include her estranged mother. Ginnette Prioleau Middleton left Charleston thirty-five years ago. She's returned wanting to protect the daughter she's never really known after receiving an ominous premonition.

Melanie never wanted to see her mother again, but with some prodding from her partner, Jack Trenholm, she agrees-and begins to rebuild their relationship. Together Melanie and Ginnette buy back their old home. With their combined psychic abilities they expect to unearth some ghosts. But what they find is a vengeful dark spirit whose strength has been growing for decades. It will take unearthing long buried secrets to beat this demon and save what's left of Melanie's family.

My Thoughts :

The first book in this series, The House on Tradd Street, was a good cozy type mystery. All to do with ghosts and old houses it was quiet an interesting and exciting read. However this second part was not what I really expected and it became a little long winded and tedious for me. Listening to this audio book was tough going and I found it hard to keep listening.

The mystery was good and even though it was slightly complicated it kept me going till the end. I liked how things developed and couldn't wait to see what really happened all those years ago. Although on the other hand I have to say the story seemed to go on forever and I felt frustrated at the characters for not getting things solved quicker. All the answers seemed to be staring them right in the face!

One thing I did like in this book was exploring Melanie's relationship with her mother. It was satisfying to finally meet the woman and get to know her, find out why she left Melanie at such a young age and in the end be a witness to them both getting along with each other. But where this relationship story gets a thumbs up the other main relationship angle in this book gets a huge boo. The constant back and forth with Melanie and Jack was annoying. I wanted to slap them both at many points in the book. For two grown up adults in their 40's they acted like teenagers. It was boring.

All in all this was an ok book but didn't live up to the first in the series. Despite a good plot and some nice paranormal developments this nice cozy mystery was a bit flat. The audio was about 15 hours long and half of that time was Melanie just pottering around and thinking out loud about anything and everything. Something I would have sped read if reading the book. Maybe the next book in the series I will actually read but to be honest I like the narrator and may just have to stick to the audio version.