Review: Bye, Bye Love by K.J. Larsen

Publication Date: April 7, 2015

Cat DeLuca stumbles across a dead body while running in the park. But when she reports it, the body disappears. Now, her reputation at the Pants on Fire Detective Agency is at stake, with the entire police department questioning her skills.

Determined to prove the murder really happened, Cat sets out to find the body and finds herself tangled in a bigger plot of crime than she thought.

Rating: 4 stars

Thoughts:
It took me a little while to get into this. In fact, I started reading this in July, but I had to stop because I wasn't very interested in it at that point. However, after finishing The Extraordinary Journey of Vivienne Marshall in December, I decided to pick this back up and try to get into it.

Surprisingly, I was able to get into this quite quickly once I started back up. The murder caught my attention really quickly, and because the book is only about 280 pages, I found that I was flying through it. I found that this second time around, I was able to engage with the characters more easily and was able to bring myself into the mindset where I wanted to figure out what was going on.

While this definitely wasn't as complex as some of the other murder mysteries I've read, I still enjoyed it a lot and had fun trying to see if I could piece together all the clues I picked up along the way. When I came to the end, I was at the point where I sort of had some things figured out, but I wasn't sure about anything, so how the book wrapped up still came as a surprise to me.

The overall pacing of the book was very good. I didn't feel like anything was rushed, and there was a balance between the intensity and the calm moments, usually when something funny would happen. I think the author did a very good job considering the length of this book and how complex the case was.

Character(s):
I can't say that I really like or dislike Cat as a protagonist. She has her moments when I really like her, but then she also has moments where she makes really rash decisions and does things I don't agree with. I suppose that her Italian heritage makes that "normal," but I thought that she could've afforded to be more careful, considering her line of work.

I wished Cat's boyfriend played a larger role in the whole story and that I got to see him more, but maybe it's just because this is the fourth book in the series and I missed out on his moments in previous books. I thought he was an interesting addition and I would've liked to have seen more of the dynamic between him and Cat.

Overall:
4 stars. I think this is a good, short mystery for a car ride, short plane ride, or a day at the beach. It's nothing too intense, but it's not too light either. It's the perfect kind of book for a relaxing read.

Acknowledgements:
Thank you to NetGalley for hosting this on your site. Thank you also to Poisoned Pen Press for approving my request to read this in exchange for an honest review.