Book Review: Escaping From Houdini

Author; Kerri Maniscalco

Publisher; Jimmy Patterson

Genres; YA mystery & YA historical fiction

Pages; 431

Rating; 2.5/5 stars

Synopsis;

“Audrey Rose Wadsworth and her partner-in-crime-investigation, Thomas Cresswell, are en route to New York to help solve another blood-soaked mystery. Embarking on a week-long voyage across the Atlantic on the opulent RMS Etruria, they’re delighted to discover a traveling troupe of circus performers, fortune tellers, and a certain charismatic young escape artist entertaining the first-class passengers nightly.

But then, privileged young women begin to go missing without explanation, and a series of brutal slayings shocks the entire ship. The strange and disturbing influence of the Moonlight Carnival pervades the decks as the murders grow ever more freakish, with nowhere to escape except the unforgiving sea. It’s up to Audrey Rose and Thomas to piece together the gruesome investigation as even more passengers die before reaching their destination. But with clues to the next victim pointing to someone she loves, can Audrey Rose unravel the mystery before the killer’s horrifying finale?”

I don’t think I’ve ever been so angry over a book. After putting this book down I sat around for an hour just full of rage because the contents of this book have now permanently tainted my love for this series. It was a miracle I even liked these books to begin with since I’m not typically a mystery or historical fiction type of person but there were things that made me love these stories. There was the slow burn romance, banter, edge and a very interesting female lead. But somehow Kerri Maniscalco destroyed everything I previously enjoyed in this series in this book alone.

I think the main issue in this book as the addition of a pointless love triangle; the one thing I never thought I would have to deal with in one of these books. The love triangle is between Audrey, Thomas and a Thomas knock off with the same sort of attitude and charm as the much preferable Mr. Cresswell. This unfortunate set up lead to Thomas hardly being in the story and the banter was non existent. The “Thomas knock off” as I’m calling him was a discounted version of Thomas who I couldn’t find any appeal in. They even looked alike! The only thing his presence really did for the story was hurt Thomas and drive a wedge between Thomas and Audrey. If all of the love triangle was cut from this book there would have been more time for the things I actually love about this series. The love triangle took up so much of the story; a better use of pages would have been to characterize Liza and the uncle more since, now that I think about it, I hardly know those characters at all.

With characters in mind: I felt like I could scream at Audrey endlessly for her actions in this book. She made bad decisions, was careless and hurt other characters without thinking twice of it. She did things so uncharacteristic that I actually found myself starting to dislike her as a character. It wasn’t until I actually read the author’s note that I could understand why she was being so abnormal. Maniscalco claims the idea was that Audrey had taken going “undercover” too far to the point where it bordered on being reality. Which, fine, yeah, I get where she’s coming from and hearing that explained a lot of the out-of-character things she did. But it should not taking having to read an author’s note to understand a character’s actions.

The mystery in this book was darker and more twisted than the first two. I’ve never been a fan of scary things, which again is why it’s a miracle I like this series in the first place, but the deaths in this book were so gruesome and gory that I didn’t like reading about it. Plus with bodies turning up every night it was hard to keep track of all the random side characters who were getting killed off; especially since most of them didn’t get any characterization. It made the mystery jumbled and hard to figure out. The characters didn’t even know who the killer was until the very end. They had no idea. Despite all the dead bodies turning up this book it lacked the eerie scary feel it should have had. I didn’t really fear for the main character’s life during the entire book despite how many bodies were turning up.

And more than anything else that upset me was the ending. It’s common knowledge that the author changed the ending from the ARC when finishing off the final copy. But that doesn’t mean it was a good ending. It was tied quickly and was really upsetting. The ending cemented my newly found dislike for Audrey Rose and has made me less thrilled about the fourth installment.

More than anything, I hope this series redeems itself in the final installment which I will be anxiously awaiting. I’d hate to see a series I love so much go completely down the drain.