WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Juneau Black’s “Summer’s End.”
Murder mystery books are usually my go-to books when I’m in a slump. And let me tell you, I have been in a slump. Unlike previous years, I have been reading the books that my English teacher assigns, and oh boy, that has put me in a slump. But I have finally finished one named “Summer’s End” by Juneau Black.
Of course, this book is part of a series. I was not aware of this beforehand. But quite honestly, you do not need to read more than one book in this series to get the gist of it. I will talk about the good parts first because I firmly believe in saving the worst for last, and this is my column, so you can’t do anything about it.
I’ll be honest with you, I only picked up this book because of the cover, and yes, I know never judge a book by its cover. But if you think I will follow that rule, you are mistaken. Along with the cover, I liked the beginning, where it explained all of the characters and their personalities. Other than that, the book was terrible.
To start my hate train, I want to talk about the characters and everything they lack. The characters in this book are animals. This fact flew right over my head when I first started reading it. Should I have known they were based on the cover? Yeah, probably, but it still was an unpleasant shock I experienced.
Vera Vixen, the main character, is a fox Journalist, and throughout the entire book, journalist cliches kept popping up. One of the main ones that kept getting mentioned in the book is that journalists are nothing but nosy gossipers. Granted, Vera was not one of the animals spouting off these simple-minded comments, but she never fought back or stopped them.
One of my niche pet peeves for books is when human-like main character books are the main characters. It’s not that I dislike animal related books. I like “Charlotte’s Web” but when they do human-like actions I hate it. Animals should stick to animal things and humans should stick to human things. I’m sorry to say but I get uncomfortable when a deer gets handcuffed.
The last thing about the characters is that they are so dull and forgetful, it just genuinely makes me mad. I can’t understand how, in the fifth book of the series, they still are one-dimensional characters. There was no character development at all. I don’t understand the point of starting a series without fully fleshing out the characters. I felt like I was reading a rough draft of a fourth grader’s writing assignment. I apologize if that sounds harsh, but come on, is it that hard to write depth in a fox journalist?
Moving on from the characters, because I’m sure you want to know what else made me dislike the book. The entire plot made me want to rip the book in half. I think I counted at least three different plot lines, and every single one of them did not come to a conclusion. And trust me, it wasn’t like a cliff hanger for the next book in the series, it was just there. My best guess is to add more pages, but really this book needed like five chapters. There were so many pieces of useless information that did nothing for the book.
Now onto the plotline, it starts off with Vera Vixen a reporter from Shady Hollow. She is chaperoning a school group to a site called Summer’s End. Summer’s End is an ancient burial site and calendar. If I had to relate it to the actual world, it would be most like the Mayan temples. When they get there, they are greeted by many professors working on the burial site, trying to uncover new things.
While the students are exploring the site, they stumble across remains that are a little too fresh to be from the original animals. One of the professors was murdered. Vera decides to take on the case and uncovers many shady things on the way. Accompanied by her best friend Lenore, a raven, she hunts down the murderer and brings justice to the town.
My overall thoughts on this book were not the best. If I’m being honest, I hated it. Was it the worst book I have ever read? No, that one goes to “Icebreaker.” I want to give this book the benefit of the doubt, it is a newer author writing these books, and I’m sure books in the future will be better than the ones I read. But that still doesn’t mean that the book was not the best it could be.
If you like cozy murder books and don’t mind when animals act as humans. Truly not the most amazing book, and honestly, I will never read one of Juneau Black’s books ever again.
