Bryan Redeagle reviewed Shady Hollow by Juneau Black (Shady Hollow, #1)
A good mystery with forest creatures
4 stars
I struggled a bit in the first chapter, but that was probably me more than the book. The story takes place in a forest town inhabited by anthropomorphic animals. My struggle was trying to visualize a fox, a mouse, and a moose all inhabiting the same coffee shop and interacting. So I just threw away realism, and thought of them as roughly the same size and looking like story book characters. Sometimes they leaned in too hard to the stereotypes of some animals.
The story and mystery itself is rather good. The main character, Vera, is believable as a journalist, and she's makes some good choices to solve the mystery (some aren't even correct, but they are logically sound). The characters are varied and colorful, and it's not a clear right and wrong to each one. The authors had me second guessing who I thought was the murderer right to …
I struggled a bit in the first chapter, but that was probably me more than the book. The story takes place in a forest town inhabited by anthropomorphic animals. My struggle was trying to visualize a fox, a mouse, and a moose all inhabiting the same coffee shop and interacting. So I just threw away realism, and thought of them as roughly the same size and looking like story book characters. Sometimes they leaned in too hard to the stereotypes of some animals.
The story and mystery itself is rather good. The main character, Vera, is believable as a journalist, and she's makes some good choices to solve the mystery (some aren't even correct, but they are logically sound). The characters are varied and colorful, and it's not a clear right and wrong to each one. The authors had me second guessing who I thought was the murderer right to the end, and I appreciated that.
