Title: Shakespeare’s Counselor (Lily Bard Series #5)
Author: Charlaine Harris
Pages: 232
Genre: Mystery, Adult
Source: Owned Paperback
Rating: C
Summary: Lily’s nightmares about her brutal attack years ago finally give her sufficient cause to seek some help. She joins a local rape survivor support group and just as she’s settled in, things start to go haywire.
The therapist leading the group is a recent transplant trying to escape a stalker. Now she’s getting threatening telephone calls, dead animals are being left on her porch, and then someone is murdered. Did the stalker follow her all the way to Shakespeare? Could she be doing it herself? Who else is in danger?
Lily Bard and her husband Jack find themselves entangled in Tamsin’s mess and won’t stop until the perpetrator is found. But is the answer as simple as it seems?
Review: This is the fifth and final installment in the Lily Bard series and truth be told, as much as I love Charlaine Harris, this series has always been my least favorite. Although there is a lot about Lily that I identify with – stubbornness, independence, refusal to accept help, strong sense of personal responsibility – she’s also not very likable over all.
This particular storyline wasn’t especially suspenseful and it was also somewhat predictable. There were a very few surprises along the way. Definitely not my favorite Lily Bard book. With a really good mystery, you should have this feeling that you just have to know what happens next. The reader should be fighting sleep to finish it because they just can’t put it down. And this definitely wasn’t that.
However, it tidied up a lot of loose ends like a final book in a series should. And having read the four other books, reading this was kind of like visiting with family. It’s comfortable, you know everyone, and it’s easy. Which is why I gave it a rating of C instead of a D.