Reviewed by PizzyGirl
TITLE: Crashing Waves
SERIES: The Warfield Hotel Mysteries Book 2
AUTHOR: C.J. Baty
PUBLISHER: Self-Published
LENGTH: 201 pages
RELEASE DATE: July 12, 2017
BLURB:
Justin Warfield ran away to Italy to put the events of the previous summer and certain dark-haired private eye behind him, to no avail. If anything, he can’t help but rehash what happened over and over. When he finally returns to South Carolina, the hotel he runs with his brother has suffered a series of incidents that are starting to look less accidental after a death threat is received.
Not satisfied that Moses Lee and his local police will find the culprit, Peter Warfield calls in the services of his good friend Marcus Drummond to help. Marcus is torn. He wants to help his friend, but he also knows that if Justin has moved on after their failed flirtation last summer, he will be devastated.
Tensions mount as danger seems to follow them at every turn, stalking them as they get closer to solving the mystery of who is behind the sabotage of the hotel.
REVIEW:
Please take this review with a grain of salt and make the decision for yourself on how you feel about these books. I was rather annoyed with the first book and I think some of that bled over into my feelings about this book as well.
I will say that as far as the blatant racism was concerned, this book was not near as bad as the previous. Racism was a strong factor, but it was treated better and not just used as a cliched way to forgive behaviors.
I also liked the mystery aspect much more in this story. It was very compelling and I just had to keep reading to find out the bad guy’s motivations. Of course his actions were wayyyyyyyyyy over dramatic and over the top emotional. And the reason in the end was rather flimsy, but it was still well presented because it got me to continue reading past my annoyances.
As for those annoyances, unfortunately they were pretty big. The first thing that really bugged me was the way the romance was presented. It was melodramatic and immature and underdeveloped. These men pined for each other yet they did nothing about it. I personally lost respect for them and lost all interest in them even being together.
The romance was also directly linked to the second thing that annoyed me. There was too much going on and it distracted from the main goal. The romances and the side plots and the drama and the rich vs poor was fine, but it wasn’t presented cohesively. This was very episodic with one topic occurring then another then back to the first and so on. All I cared about was the mystery so the rest just felt inserted for no reason into the timeline in places that made o impact to the story. And there were sex scenes that made no sense to me in their placement. It was like “OMG WE NEED THIS INFORMATION ASAP”….sex scene and two more other scenes, sex scene…”OH YEAH INFORMATION”…sex scene. Drove me crazy with annoyance.
I still think both book 1 and 2 should have been combined into one mystery. The side plots and the romance could have easily been removed and the focus placed on the murders and the sabotage. The mystery was the best part of this for me and I wish more time was devoted to that allone.
I will end this by saying that the author did a good job of setting up the next book. It takes the thread of the misplaced side plots in this story and promises to pull them all together. I will give it a shot as the author seems to be improving with each book.
RATING: 
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