From the BLURB:
There is no such thing as bad publicity, except
in Midnight, Texas, where the residents like to keep to themselves. Even in a
town full of secretive people, Olivia Charity is an enigma. She lives with the
vampire Lemuel, but no one knows what she does; they only know that she’s
beautiful and dangerous.
Psychic Manfred Bernardo finds out just how
dangerous when he goes on a working weekend to Dallas and sees Olivia there
with a couple who are both found dead the next day. To make matters worse, one
of Manfred’s regular—and very wealthy—clients dies during a reading.
Manfred returns from Dallas embroiled in
scandal and hounded by the press. He turns to Olivia for help; somehow he knows
that the mysterious Olivia can get things back to normal. As normal as things
get in Midnight…
‘Day Shift’
is the second book in Charlaine Harris’s new urban fantasy series, ‘Midnight, Texas’ … which happens to be a sort of amalgamation of all her other series,
featuring various secondary characters from those books.
Last year I
was so thrilled with Harris’s new series, and counted ‘Midnight, Crossroad’ as
one of my favourite books of 2014. This new series features Manfred Bernardo
from Harris’s ‘Harper Connelly’ series, Bobo Winthrop from ‘Lily Bard’, a
character called Fiji Cavanaugh has a relative who is a Bon Temps sheriff, the
detective Arthur from ‘Aurora Teagarden’ pops up … and in ‘Day Shift’ we catch
up with a few more minor and secondary characters from Sookie Stackhouse’s
world.
Basically,
Midnight is a one traffic light town with a whole lot of weird and wonderful
residents who all apparently occupy Charlaine Harris’s one-in-the-same universe
for all her series. I loved the concept, and adored ‘Midnight Crossroad’,
particularly because Bobo from ‘Lily Bard’ was perhaps the one character of
Harris’s that I most wanted a happy ending for, and in this new series we get
to see what became of him and a few other wayward folk from her various series.
Yes, there’s
mystery and murder – what Charlaine Harris writes best – but this series felt
very much character driven, since the author has collected the most beloved and
missed folk from her various series. So I was really disheartened to get to the
end of ‘Day Shift’ feeling like I’d been short-changed on the character side of
things with this second book.
What I loved
most from ‘Midnight Crossroad’ was the unrequited love affair between
across-the-road neighbours Fiji and Bobo, and the way Harris was teasing out
Fiji’s crush on her best friend. I also liked the hint of romance between
Manfred and a young woman called Creek, whose family was in turmoil by the end
of ‘Crossroad’. Unfortunately in ‘Day Shift’ Fiji and Bobo are the two
characters with the least amount of page-time, and Creek isn’t mentioned once
in the whole book. This second instalment is concentrated on a murder-mystery
with Manfred at the centre, and providing backstory for Midnight resident
Olivia and her vampire lover, Lemuel. Character Joe and Chuy also get plenty of
baffling page-time, as does the Rev and a new young resident (with links to Bon
Temps).
She opened the basket and, and out jumped Mr. Snuggly. Mr. Snuggly immediately went to the boy and stood at his feet, looking up. The boy had dark brown hair, long and tangled. He wore denim shorts and a Walking Dead T-shirt, which was an unusual choice for a child his apparent age. But what was that?
“Hail, little brother,” said Mr. Snuggly in his small shrill voice.
With a movement too quick to track, the boy was on his knees in front of the cat, peering into his face. Suddenly, the boy smiled. It was bewitching. He looked up at Fiji, and Olivia could see that his eyes were pansy purple.
“Okay, I’m in love,” Fiji said cheerfully.
I just
couldn’t believe that after setting up Fiji and Bobo with such interesting
characterisation in ‘Midnight Crossroad’, Harris would just erase them from
this second instalment … I’m really quite gobsmacked, to be honest. I know
Harris has set a hard task for herself by making this a multiple-character
focused story, as opposed to a Sookie Stakchouse/Aurora Teagarden/Lily
Bard/Harper Connelly single-focus hero series. But she balanced the focus
between Fiji, Bobo and Manfred really well against the mystery of other
Midnight characters like Lemuel, Olivia and Rev. In ‘Day Shift’ all that
built-up intrigue surrounding Olivia especially is just thrown out the window,
and characters like Fiji and Bobo really do suffer.
Even
increased focus on Manfred felt hollow when there’s absolutely no mention of
young woman Creek, who was set up as a sort of romantic mystery for him in
‘Crossroad’. In fact, the whole of ‘Day Shift’ felt like it lacked heart –
though Lemuel and Olivia have a tender if bizarre romance, they lack the heart
and heat of Fiji’s unrequited love for Bobo or Manfred’s forbidden lusting
after Creek. It’s a sad fact but in this series that’s meant to be very
character-driven, without those deeper relationships and feelings between the
characters it feels very much like something is hollow and missing.
To be
honest, I was so frustrated with the lack of tangible connection in this book
that the mystery also held less interest and gravitas as a result. The only
thing I liked in this book were the two Bon Temps characters – one of whom I’ve
always loved and wanted some reassurance that good things happened to them
after the conclusion of ‘Sookie Stackhouse’.
Al in all this
was a really disappointing second instalment after the pure enjoyment that was
first book ‘Midnight Crossroad’. I hope in the third book ‘Night Shift’, coming
2016, Fiji and Bobo return for more page-time and there can be some
acknowledgment of the romantic relationships that Harris did such a good job of
establishing in the first book.
1.5/5
