Beastly Bones

Yeah, I didn't like the first book in the series, but I decided to give this a chance, mostly just to see if it was a dud of a first book or I should never ever read any more of Mr. Ritter's works. Aaaand at this point I feel I will never ever read any more of his works. Yay?

In this one they found some fossils in the countryside, but the lady whose family owns the land also dies. Of course it all sounds super creepy and Abigail Rook also loves them dino bones, so they just need to go there. That is... pretty much it.

I had three huuuge issues with this that made me be unable to enjoy the ride.

1, The characters. Jesus Christ, everyone is so ridiculous, but Abigail, who tells us all in first person is the absolute winner in the category of Why Are You Alive? and it's not even funny. She is supposedly the super smart, super useful assistant of Mr. Jackaby, the one and only magic Sherlock Holmes! (Of course the Bendidick Cucumberpatch one, because he's hawwwt.) At the same time she can't be trusted with any fragile object because she is so clumsy it's a miracle she is even alive. For some reason everyone is amazed by her astonishing intellect and she is still just being carried around during the whole thing and she acts like a child.
Jackaby is quirky and that's all, Abilgail's dude is super dreamy and cute, one of the dino diggers is comically mean to the women, etc. Every character is extremely two dimensional. No depth. Never. Not even a bit.

2, We still get the little mentions of how women are not supposed to be this or that, how at this era women just need to be housewives and how Abigail is extremely special for not being a lady.
But... nothing happens to her. Nothing. She routinely spends the night with unmarried young men as an unmarried young woman without anyone around and nobody cares. Hell, she LIVES alone with Jackaby full time. She travelled to America alone. She does whatever she wants. Then where is the big deal???

3, The pacing was bad. This is a book you can read in an afternoon, 300 pages of easy stuff. New characters are still being introduced at about 60%, we are going nowhere with the story. Setting things up can take long, but not in books this damn short, that have such a simple plot and that are the second in a series, when we already know about the world. Sorry, but this is not how any of this works.

(Probably won't) see you, Mr. Ritter!