Customer Reviews

What's a Ghoul to Do? (Ghost Hunter Mysteries, Book 1)

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I was really excited to read this book because I love the Psychic Eye Mysteries Victoria Laurie also writes. I'm not a picky reader, but I'm sorry, this didn't quite do it for me and I ended up very disappointed.

I was hoping they'd be different from the P. E. Mysteries, but still have similar elements of style. Even though I like romance, this book was supposed to be a mystery, hence A Ghost Hunter Mystery on the cover, but the mystery is thrown in around the rather awkwardly written romance between M. J. and Steven. I did think the first chapter was good because I thought M. J. would be different than Abby and more antisocial and a bit cranky (at least that's what I got from the first chapter), but then she ended up giggling throughout the whole book (seriously). What I like about the P. E. Mysteries are that they are fresh, fun, well written, and the characters are (for the most part) believable. Not to mention, I got extremely tired of reading Steven's choppy English ('what do you say...?', 'Yes, that too', etc.), which made the dialogue even choppier and flatter than it already was, not to mention irritating as all get out. I don't know why V. L. couldn't have made him more fluent in English, especially since he was so well educated, it would only have been a small tweak in the plot. But I've noticed Ms. Laurie has a bit of a redundancy problem in her books, even if I do love Abby Cooper, Psychic Eye, which has the 'liar, liar, pants on fire' repetition, where when someone lies, Abby's 'inborn lie detector' goes off with that chant.

Overall, the dialogue was choppy, the plot and mystery were subpar, the characters were clichés and unbelievable (Doc was a nice addition though), and the whole book badly needed editing. I would not recommend this, although I'm sure many (as seen in the numerous four and five star ratings) would like this as it's not completely horrible; it's just not very fresh even if the subject is interesting. I haven't quite made up my mind if I'll pick up the next in the series.

I love Victoria Laurie's Psychic Eye series, I've enjoyed each Abby Cooper book and highly recommend to readers of Romance and/or Mystery. So when I saw "What's A Ghoul to Do?", a new series, I was eager to read more by this author. I was sadly disappointed, and found it very annoying! Victoria Laurie is a good enough writer that I was able to force myself to finish reading the book, just so I could find out what happened, but I won't bother reading the next one. I don't want to spoil it for anyone who does chose to read it but the hero has a really really annoying habit that might be charming in real life but has a serious cringe factor on paper. And the torture never ends, it is throughout the book! (WARNING -- SPOILER FOLLOWS)
It is the equivalent of having a character mispronounce words, then another character constantly correcting the mispronounciation!! Oh right, what is annoying in real life becomes excruciating on paper! And at the end, we find this annoying guy will return in the second book. Lets hope he learns to saw the english, I mean, speak english, before then. Aaagh!

I read this book quickly, after putting it down for a while and picking it back up. I found the relationship with Dr. Sable aggravating as I didn't really get the attraction and he came off as somewhat slimy. The mystery portion of the book was good as far as the twist at the end goes...but I don't think I would read another in this series.

I enjoyed this book as I have the others by this author. I'm interested in the subject and like the characters . . . except . . . I tired quickly of M.J's silliness when it came to her relationship with Dr. Sable. I'd noticed the same relationship between Abby Cooper and the men she's involved with. Too much. I'd love to read this book (and other Laurie books) with an adult as the main character! I hope the girls mature into women as Laurie continues writing.

I struggled with this book. MJ is a ghostbuster, who along with her gay partner Gilley (this gay partner/best friend thing is feeling a little cliche)try to send ghostly spririts to the 'other side'. The premise sounds intriguing and there are several scenes involving these ghosts which are very interesting. I enjoyed these interactions between the ghosts and MJ and or Gilley. However, the book almost feels sabatoged by the character of Steven Sable. He has got to be the most horrid love interest I have ever come across. What is even worse, is that the author clearly intends for him to be amazingly sexy and romantic. He knocks MJ off her feet. As others have previously mentioned here, Steven struggles speaking English. I read the reviews, but thought surely it wouldn't be as distracting as reviewers suggest. It was worse!!! Every scene with Steven was clogged in passages where he would use some word incorrectly and MJ would always pause to figure out what he meant, and then laugh at how cute he was for messing it up, then give him the correct wording to use. This could happen three or four times per page! Even worse, was the fact that many of these misused words aren't even close to sounding realistic. Towards the end of the book, I was actually happy whenever Steven wasn't in a scene! I groaned outloud when I read that they plan for him to be an ongoing character. Its a shame, but this character is pretty much the only reason I would hesistate to recommend this book on. I will not read the follow up anytime soon, if I read it at all, however I am encouraged by reviews that suggest Steven has a much smaller role in the next book, and its been reviewed higher than this one.

I couldn't even finish this book, I made it halfway through and couldn't take the romantic interest any longer. I've never not finished a book before, but with all the "How you say.." crap I couldn't take it and I really wanted to like it. Most of the reviews were good ones I just don't understand what I missed. I even tried to give it another chance but still couldn't get into it.

While I very much enjoy the Psychic Eye series, this book annoyed me to no end. MJ's romantic interest, a man who has two doctorates and speaks 5 languages, was stumped through the entire book by simple english colloquialisms. Every other page he was asking "how you say", but interlaced were conversations where he had no trouble at all mastering more difficult phrases. This on top of a slow story line earned a 1 star in my opinion. I downloaded a sample of Book 2 and unfortunately the same dialogue continues. . .

As a fan of the Abby Cooper series, I anticipated this new series - A Ghost Hunter Mystery - and I was not disappointed - this is another delightful series!! M.J. and her partner, Gilley are ghostbusters. Dr. Steven Sable, hires them to find out what happened to his grandfather. As Ms. Laurie has done with the Abby Cooper books, she shows us the role of a psychic - the responsibilities, the integrity, the dedication.
To help a soul who has lost their way, to help them 'cross over' needs not only the ability to 'see' the soul, but be able to help them find their way. Not just all the gadgets that a ghostbuster needs to find spiritual activity. Ms. Laurie masterfully educates us what it takes to do this line of work, as well as entertain us with wonderful plot and characters. Laurie also writes a fine story with action, mystery, romance, and mixing the paranormal with the everyday makes the reader right there in the action. Laurie's writing, the word play between the characters is crisp and wonderful.
I am happy that this new series is great and look forward to more -
Can tell you that Ms. Laurie is gifted in her own right and gives her insight into her work.
You will enjoy this and all Victoria Laurie's works.

After reading, and loving, the Abby Cooper series, I was pretty disappointed in this book. Ms. Laurie, to her credit, did a good job creating new characters for this series, but I just didn't find them very likeable; they were just OK. Something I really didn't like about the book was that I felt it was more "preachy" about what's involved in being a medium. To have MJ just keep explaining it to Steve was boring. Maybe if MJ had done some individual readings and the information was sifted through to the reader, it would have been much better (for me anyway). I just don't think these characters are interesting, {except for the parrot. I loved Doc). I think I would have preferred a series with Theresa and her husband. Maybe they could have a physic child (based on the author's experiences with being a young physic). But if the goal is to make a completely different series, Theresa out in California, with a husband, a TV show and her connection to Abby, may accomplish that better.

In closing, I am not a writer, just a reader and Steve's struggle with the English language was annoying to me and made this book seem childish. His errors were not funny and mixing up words was old after the third time it was done in the book. Having said that, I have to say that I love Victoria Laurie's story lines. I wish I had even a tenth of her talent and I love the subject matter. I won't be buying book two in this series, but I will be checking out Ms. Laurie's future work.

The first irritating thing about this book is the hero's inability to speak English. The first time it happened was cute-ish. The fifth time it was annoying, the 50th time, the reader is gritting their teeth and saying, can we just get ON with it already! It might have been fine for a single book but as this is apparently going to be a recurring character, kill this character habit QUICKLY.

The second annoying thing about the book was the fact that apparently, MJ is a medium who can get every single other ghosts name on the first guess, but when it comes to solving the mystery, she's reduced to "I'm getting an "M" name". What? She can get Rita, Miguel, Larry, Lily and Max at the drop of a hat, not even a L..L..Lily? but for the entirety of the book, in the main mystery, "I'm getting an "M" name"? And of course, all the female side characters have names that begin with...you guessed it.."M". That's just cheap and sloppy writing.