Murder by Death

Eh, they can't all be winners.

A rare-book expert is delivering a package to Half Moon Hollow when her plane goes down, and a sexy vampire comes to her rescue. He's clearly got ulterior motives, but does he want to date her–or devour her?

This one was always going to be iffy for me, because while I'm a fan of rare-book expert/librarian/archivist MCs, I'm not a fan of the whole deep woods survival/Predator premise.  Plus I had a bias against the love interest because he irritated the fool out of me in a previous book.

But even accounting for that, this one just doesn't work for me as well as Harper's other books.  Too much angst and not enough investment in her storyline.  Considering someone was willing to crash her plane to get what they wanted, Anne got out of those woods with a minimum of confrontation.  Plus, because it was only Anne and Finn, there wasn't nearly enough opportunity for the trademark snarky dialogue and awesome friendships I so love when Dick and Jane and Andrea are around.

The good news is the last 20% of the book, after they got out of the woods, was much better; funnier and more interesting.  Because yes, the gang's all here.  The ending also contained possibly the weakest, most half-hearted attempt at past relationship closure and karmic justice I've witnessed in a book in a long time.

It sound like I'm being generous with my rating, but it's still an entertaining read and it was easy to pick up and lose myself in it.  It's just that Harper has written so many incredibly funny books with such endearing characters and enviable friendships, that this one struggles in comparison.  Good, but far from her best.