Review: Final Shadows

Review: Final ShadowsFinal Shadows (Bishop Files #3) by Kay Hooper
Published by Berkley on December 31, 2018
Genres: Paranormal
Pages: 336
Goodreads
two-half-stars

FINAL DECISION: By the middle of this book, I was reading it only for the story of the characters. The plotline of this book and the entire series has become muddled and bizarre. But I still love the characters; I just wish we could have stayed in the realm of the psychic mysteries and avoided the weird E.T. stuff.

THE STORY: First, the blurb for this book isn’t really related to the story. Tasha and Brodie are in the book, but the book’s narrative really seems more centered around Bishop and Miranda. There isn’t much romance at all, but rather the various couples met in the series are investigating a series of missing psychics and latent psychics. Someone seems to abducting them and then disposing of them. There are various narrative characters who make appearances in the story.

OPINION: This book just makes me sad. I love the characters and in fact, I re-read portions of the characters dialogue and interactions, but the plot is just bad. The whole story undermines the SCU series and takes this to crazy places that I wish it hadn’t gone.

I absolutely love Bishop and Miranda and I continued with this book just because the two are so present in this book. I also enjoyed seeing the other couples and thankfully, we do get to see Tasha and Brodie’s relationship develop more.

I also really enjoyed the meetings between Murphy and Duran. In fact, I thought their relationship — such as it is — was the best developed in the book. There is something sinister and uneasy about their interactions which are interesting and by the end of the book, I wanted to read more about them.

The last few books in this and the SCU series make me really sad. Re-reading the early books in the series gives a real sense of character and menace and mystery. This book seems like an unbelievable explanation for a plot that is too complex.

WORTH MENTIONING: With the talking cat, this series moved away from a series grounded in any type of reality for me.

CONNECTED BOOKS: FINAL SHADOWS is the final book in the Bishop Files trilogy and is also connected with the Bishop/Special Crimes Unit series. I don’t think this can be read as a standalone. I’ve read all the books in both series multiple times and frankly, I couldn’t follow much of the story at this point. Too many references to characters and events without any recap.

STAR RATING: I give this book 2.5 stars.

two-half-stars

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