#13.02.2022

ITS SO FUCKING BEAUTIFUL AAAAHHGGG

And I have my first DNF of the year, sadly. I had really hoped to be able to push through this one, especially since it is so short (less than 200 pages), but I just couldn’t do it. I was familiar with Charlaine Harris from her Southern Vampire series, which I had mixed feelings about, and when I came across this short story collection I was intrigued to see what she’s been up to post Sookie Stackhouse. But this was just… I’m actually not sure what this was. The main character, Anne DeWitt, is one of the most bland, uninteresting protagonists I have ever come across. The first story begins with a man breaking into her apartment and her being forced to kill him and dispose of his body which makes her late for work, but the whole thing is handled in such a bland way that all of the tension, drama, or even potential dark comedy of the whole thing falls flat. Every single character in this is boring and a cardboard cutout of a human being with no more attempt to flesh them out other than their role within the story. No depth, no dimension. And I have no clue what Harris was going for here. The whole: deep dark secret from the past coming back to haunt her aspect seems to be pointing to a tense narrative where the protagonist has to stay ahead of those hunting her, but the set up of: the woman’s primary concern about having to kill this man and get rid of his body (along with the author’s note at the beginning about how the idea came to her while realizing she has a set routine she follows when getting ready every day and what would happen to a person whose routine was suddenly thrown out of wack) is that this is going to make her late for work could have possibly been a bit of a dark comedy (at least that was what I was thinking this was when I first read the synopsis). And of course there are ways to balance both: like Harris did with Sookie Stackhouse, but for some reason she just missed to mark here. I couldn’t make it past the first story, so maybe there is something I missed. Or maybe this is just not the story for me. Not sure but a hard pass.