Maggie For Hire

Maggie For Hire
Kate Danley, 2011

Copy received from BookRooster for review.

Premise: Maggie is a tracker, but now someone’s tracking her. Her life of tracking undead and other nonhuman bail jumpers is upset when she’s caught between a group of strangely powerful vampires, an elf who wants her services on behalf of the elven queen, and a mysterious figure who wants Maggie’s power to walk between worlds.

This was a fun read that started really strong, but there’s not much supporting the fun.

The style of the writing is the most striking thing about this novel. Maggie’s voice is conversational and funny, with a decent turn on humorous phrases. The supporting cast is interesting and sometimes silly.

The plot is pretty thin, though. It doesn’t end up amounting to much, and while the climax works, it wasn’t as strong as it could have been. The friendship between Maggie and Killian works right up until it feels forced, and while the style starts adorable, it eventually got a smidge cloying. The Other Side was really interesting, but nothing about it was established beyond the existence of elves, vampires and other mythical beasties. Maggie is half Other Sider, but what that means and what her dad is was never addressed.

A lot of my problems with the book, though, didn’t come to mind until after I finished reading it, because the experience of reading it was pleasant. It’s a cotton candy sort of story: inoffensive, sweet, fun for a while, not filling.

Can I mention how happy I am that I never saw the cover before reading the book? I picked the least terrible of the various covers to put with this article, but the other ones don't fit the book at all, and this one's just odd.

I enjoyed the experience of reading Maggie for Hire, but I don’t think I’ll need to track down the next one.

2 Stars - An Okay Book