St. Thomas, the college north of New York City where Alison teaches, has had its share of scandals involving its students, staff, and Alison herself, so when a Resident Director goes missing they keep it quiet by tapping Alison as a replacement. A stay in the dorms is like hard time and she will do anything to avoid it. Her way out: Find the reluctant resident and drag him back. Luckily, she doesn’t have to look further than the drugs he’s hidden to get her boyfriend, Detective Bobby Crawford, on the case.
My Thoughts :
The Murder 101 Mysteries is another series I am trying to catch-up on/finish. I switched to listening to the series because I wasn't making much progress on the books and they were hard to get/expensive in other formats. Audible has all of the series and I am slowly but surely making my way through them and I think there are two or three more in the series.
As themes for cozy mysteries go this one isn't a bad one. I have enjoyed the series since the beginning and despite sometimes finding Alison a little annoying, I do find her to be funny and interesting. However this fourth book in the series was not as good as the previous books and unless the next books in the series are really bad then I will be naming Final Exam the worst in the series.
I still give this book three stars because it wasn't bad enough for me to give up. I just found the story to be a little all over the place, repetitive and sometimes boring. From the beginning I just couldn't get my head around Alison's situation. I just couldn't believe that her boss could make her move onto campus and take over a students job. Of course it set the scene for the mystery but it wasn't plausible enough. But then again the mystery itself wasn't very exciting.
Then there was times in the story where I felt like Alison was repeating herself. Sometimes I am pretty sure she was finding new information that she actually already knew. Although on saying that maybe I just made the connections quicker than she did because I have to say Alison comes across as a little stupid in this installment and definitely doesn't seem like a professor. There were other things that bothered me in this book. Alison's Detective boyfriend was very uninteresting and her best friend Max was just annoying.
Despite these little moans and groans I did finish listening to the book and will be continuing with the series. However if the next book doesn't have something special going on it may make me quit while I am ahead. Also I hope the narrator improves herself as the series continues. I like her voice but now and again her pronunciation seems wrong. Maybe it is the American vs. British English (which has never been a problem for me before) but it comes across to often for me to believe that.
A nice series so far despite this not so good Final Exam. Will be interesting to see what the next book has to offer and what developments the regular characters make after the problems that occurred in this book.
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