Lady's Well: A DCI Ryan Mystery (The DCI Ryan Mysteries Book 20)

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Thinking of a creative venture that would take her away from her job, she fell pregnant with her son. Motherhood was a very exciting prospect for L.J. Ross, though she was still unsatisfied with her career that would not give her the flexibility she desired to have as a mother. After over a month of struggling to finish a book, LJ Ross has yet again saved me with a BRAND NEW and completely different story. No DCI Ryan you say? What about Dr Gregory? Alas lads, apart from a VERY SUPER AMAZING but very super tiny cameo from one of our loved characters, The Cove introduces a whole brood of new people to learn about and - obviously - adore. I found Ross's writing irritating at times, and I'm not sure if it's because I am unfamiliar with the series and its idiosyncrasies, but there were a few things that grated on me, personally.

Firstly, the obsession with DCI Ryan?! Yes, we get it, he is tall and handsome and upper class and white and privileged, but why does this need to be reiterated so many times?! Why do we need to be reminded that he's tall all the time? Why do people need to be told that he's the spitting double of Superman?! Why do we need to lust over memories of him getting out of a river? Why does his wife of years need to swoon when he comes in the door?! It just seemed a bit cringy. What are his faults? What makes him interesting? Granted, I haven't read the rest of the series, but from this he seemed quite a tedious person whose best features were just a happy coincidence, and that said little about his character (does he have one?! Is it just Posh Upper Class Boi?). It's a decent story. Pretty good characters. Beautiful scenery. And I will read pretty much anything that's set in a bookshop by the coast. There were a few problems with this, which keeps it from getting a higher rating. The series begins with him being the only member of an elite criminal profiling unit to escape from a storm of scandal and mismanagement. He is adamant he will begin a quiet life, but a murderer loose in the beautiful hills of County Mayo, Ireland draws him into the murder investigation to aid the Garda.Before she became an author Ross was a practicing lawyer in London. She grew up in Northumberland, England — where many of her books take place — and attended King’s College at the University of London for her undergraduate and postgraduate in law. She also studied in Paris and Florence.

While she will always be a northerner at heart, she currently lives with her husband and their son in Bath on the outskirts of London where she spends her days writing her detective mysteries. Ross loved books from a very early age when she would find old books from her mother’s chest that she would staple and illustrate during her middle school years. Even as she has a varied taste in the types of novels that she reads, and will not mind reading the odd women’s fiction or a romance. Lastly, there was just SO many cliches. So many phrases that just grated because yes, they do the job, but isn't there a fresher way to say them?! Some of them (quite literally) interrupted the flow or reading because I just had to roll my eyes! This might be personal taste, too, but I found them detracting from the story. And what is going on with the italics?! Are they thoughts? Sentences? Stage directions? What do they MEAN?! They seem to be used for such different purposes and, again, they broke my focus because they were so unnecessary and confusing. LJ Ross is an internationally bestselling author, whose books have sold over 7 million copies worldwide.This book goes for the most part to the standard no major overlap with another book from the series, but if you did not read the previous two, I do strongly suggest to have a go before going for this one, or you will know one of the murders in this one. A good 90% of the story is seen from Gabrielle's POV, with the odd sentence in the middle of a chapter suddenly clearly being from someone else's POV. You don't have to be Virginia Woolf, but if you do head-hopping within chapters, you have to be good and you have to be consistent. That just wasn't the case here. Towards the end there's a few chapters consistently told from someone else's POV which I have no problem with, it's just this wishy-washy nonsense that makes me irrationally annoyed. Ross, L. J. (2021). "The Cove: A Summer Suspense Mystery (The Summer Suspense Mysteries)". Dark Skies Publishing. ISBN 978-1912310913.