The visitor

I wasn't expecting this to be a dud. I loved the first two of the series so well that I decided to read it soon after...and this one has a completely different feel. The well-developed characters from previous books are one-dimensional here. A new character here is so tongue-tied around his family that he literally can't ask them what they did that day, but he can talk to another person for hours on end. A man whose eyes are supposed to be getting no light is wearing “patches” instead of bandages (totally different purpose; patches wouldn't block light around the edges). The characters gleefully lunch and honeymoon in 1812. They also frequent slang phrases like “get a move on” and “give it a go.” The unmarried women are having their lives ruined because their loves aren't speaking to them of love but they're expected to give encouragement before the men speak out and flirt a little to indicate interest first (say what...), and not flirting has put them in danger of dying old maids. An unmarried man hugs his female acquaintances.

All of that together adds up to a novel that distracts from the action and which makes it feel like the author's perspective somehow changed from the earlier books.

Hopefully it's a fluke and #4 is like the others!