Book Review: The Aurora Teagarden Series by Charlaine Harris

Summary:

Though a small town at heart, Lawrenceton, Georgia, has its dark side-and crime buffs. One of whom is librarian Aurora "Roe" Teagarden, a member of the Real Murders Club, which meets once a month to analyze famous cases. It's a harmless pastime-until the night she finds a member killed in a manner that eerily resembles the crime the club was about to discuss. And as other brutal "copycat" killings follow, Roe will have to uncover the person behind the terrifying game, one that casts all the members of Real Murders, herself included, as prime suspects-or potential victims.

Review:

The series includes eight books:  Real Murders; A Bone to Pick; Three Bedrooms, One Corpse; The Julius House; Dead Over Heels; A Fool and His Honey; Last Scene Alive; and Poppy Done to Death. 

The heroine is Aurora "Roe" Teagarden, a small-town librarian.  The series is light hearted and pretty simple.  Each book is a little mystery in itself, with the continuing arc of Roe's love life.  The books were a decent distraction while I was waiting for better books to be released, but they were easy to put down. 

There is a heavy emphasis on Roe's everyday life, such as housework, getting ready for work, cooking and eating meals, etc.  If this kind of minutae bothers you I would not recommend this series.  The books are not heavy on the suspense like the Sookie Stackhouse series is. 

I have to wonder about series about respectable people involved in murder investigations.  It seems to me, that in real life, most respectable people are not involved in any murder investigations at all, while here we have a librarian surrounded by multiple deaths.  That just seems very unrealistic to me.  In a paranormal series, I could understand it, but not so much here.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the Aurora Teagarden series is overall okay.  Definitely not great, and altogether forgettable.  In fact, when I was writing this review I forgot that there were eight books in the series.  I read these books last year and that's not like me to forget about a series so quickly!  The books seemed to improve as the series progressed.  But, if I hadn't already read Harris' Sookie series and knew her to be a good author, I probably would have given up after Real Murders.  As it is, I'm glad I got these from the library.  I would not have paid to keep reading after book one.

Just One Gripe:

I got so tired of reading about all of Roe's different glasses.  So she has glasses in every color, big deal, Charlaine Harris!  Maybe I'm just jealous because I can't afford more than one pair of glasses...

The Best Thing About This Series:

The books are light-hearted with a little humor.

Appropriate for a younger audience:

Maybe not because each book is a little murder mystery.  The series has much less sex and gore than Harris' Sookie Stackhouse series though.

Score:

Characters:  2/5

Plot:  3/5

Setting/Imagery:  2/5

Originality:  2/5

Ending:  3/5

Total Score:  12/25