The 20th Victim by James Patterson/Maxine Paetro was hard to get through

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The 20th Victim by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro (released 5/4/20) was the first I have read of the Women’s Murder Club series. I was excited to read it, having just finished my first James Patterson/Candice Fox book Hush, a Detective Harriet “Harry” Blue book (released 6/2/20) in July, which I loved. My rating reaction to Hush was in line with that of other readers, my opinion of The 20th Victim is not. I started the audiobook July 14, and finished it August 19th, entailing lining up again on the hold list to get it for another 21 days in order to finish it. I found this book excruciatingly difficult to get through on audiobook, my usual format. The book seemed terribly fragmented and disjointed. Unlike Hush, I was not strongly compelled to go to the next chapter, and the storyline was not as gripping for me as I had hoped it would be. I would have classified it as “dnf” except that I have some weird compulsion to finish every book, and I honestly can’t remember not having finished one. After listening to 32% of the book I took a break, reading 18 other books before continuing this one. I normally listen at 1.5x speed, and after continuing my listening through another 30% of the book, decided to crank the speed up to 1.75x, which oddly seemed to help hold my attention. I don’t know why my experience with this book is so far from the norm for most readers. Out of curiosity I will read another from this series to see if this was some kind of black swan event for me, or if it’s the series itself I’m just not connecting with. My best advice to others would be before buying, if you can, download the kindle sample of this book from Amazon, read it, and see if it clicks with you.

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