Devils and Details

By: Devon Monk

Narrated by: Khristine Hvam

Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea....

Police Chief Delaney Reed is good at keeping secrets for the beach town of Ordinary, Oregon - just ask the vacationing gods or supernatural creatures who live there.

But with the first annual Cake and Skate fundraiser coming up, the only secret Delaney really wants to know is how to stop the unseasonable rain storms. When all the god powers are stolen, a vampire is murdered, and her childhood crush turns out to be keeping deadly secrets of his own, rainy days are the least of her worries.

Hunting a murderer, outsmarting a know-it-all god, and uncovering an ancient vampire’s terrifying past isn’t how she planned to spend her summer. But then again, neither is falling back in love with the one man she should never trust.

©2016 Devon Monk (P)2018 Audible, Inc.

It just gets better

Again I am hooked and going for the next one. So glad I found this series.

love Devon Monk!

Love the Ordinary series. Best author!❤ Cant wait for the next one. Great performance, too.

Book 2 - Death wears pink

I really like this world - a little town on the Oregon coast where gods go to put on casual clothes, put their powers away for a while, and just enjoy being human. I like the three sisters who are the police force for everyone in town - gods, werewolves, demi-gods, vampires, humans, and assorted others. Book 1 was great - introduced the whole place, the gods have interesting personalities, the humans don't know about the gods, the gods just wanna have some human fun for a while, book 1 was a lot of fun.

Alas, book 2, not so much at all. As for the actual content that moved the series forward, Book 2 could have been a lot shorter, one of those novellas that Audible carries as bridges from one full novel to the next, that only cost half of what a full book does. There are some events that happen that are important to the overall series, but they have been stretched out to book length by adding copious amounts of the lead female (the sheriff) doing does he love me, do I love him, no I don't love him, he has a nice body, in her head. Oh, and, the book ended with a cliff hanger, ("war is coming", "war is coming" - how's that for an unsubtle plot device cliff hanger?) which does tend to be seriously irritating.

I don't know if I'll invest in book 3. After book 2, I don't trust this author to give me a full book for my credit. So, now I'm the one going back and forth in my head - yes, I like the world she's developed, I love Death hanging out in t-shirts with bizarre sayings on them, I like the Vampire king as a hippie with love beads leading yoga classes; I love the rhubarb festival, and Hera and the Valkyrie, I'm very fond of Myra, the roller-derby queen cop, and I want to go back and hang with them. We'll see, I'm just disappointed in book 2.

I guess the bottom line here is, if you like soap operas, and really, the characters are great in this one, you'll probably like this book so go ahead and enjoy it.

Looking for an awesome kick a$$ female lead?!?!

Well.... look somewhere else. I love the concept of this book. The idea of gods, vampires, werewolves and other creatures mingling together in an “ordinary” small town doing mundane jobs like running a kite shop or teaching yoga or participating in a ?rhubarb? festival is surprisingly interesting. The characters, MANY as there are, are fun and quirky, while she doesn’t delve into each one in-depth, you can still get a feel for their personalities. The main character and the “love interest” however.....I simply hate them both. She plays like a tough girl but she’s really just a push over hiding behind the faux authority of her badge and linage. She has no real strength in her (and I don’t mean supernaturally) but just no back bone. Her sisters are both better characters with real force and resilience in them and it shows in how they kind of “mother” her around. And the love interest lies to her, manipulates her and is seemingly using her!! But all she does is talk about how she’s loved him since they were kids while ignoring how terrible he is as an adult!! While he just gives her the aww shucks look and she’s putty in his hands again!!! It’s so frustrating!! I’m going to read the next one because I overall like the Story DM is trying to tell?? I am really struggling with this one so if I don’t see any character development or idk SOMETHING in the next installment sadly this series will go straight to my DNF shelf. Which is sad because I’m a huge fan of DM but I guess they all can’t be winners.

Great book!

Very good book. An entertaining listen due to a great narration. Very well developed characters and good plot.

Great narrator, good continuation

This is the 2nd book in a three book series. There is a crime to solve which resolves about 70 to 75 percent in. The remainder of the book deals with the continuing story arc and relationships. The book is good. It does not move the overall arc forward much. You do get to know more about Ordinary"s citizens. Ryder and Delaney start talking again. I like this series and this author. I'm looking forward to starting book 3. The narrator is awesome. Her pace and timing are good. She narrates one of my favorite series so I was familiar with (and a fan of) hers. If you liked the first book, you will enjoy this one.

Better than the first book. IMO..

I liked this better than Death and Relaxation. This one was about all the Gods’ power being stolen and the hunt for them. And the murder of one of the vampires, the attempted murder of another and the kidnapping of another. AND Delaney and Ryder DO end up together this time.

But, this one if left as somewhat of a cliffhanger. So, unanswered questions that were very important. So, I’ll read the next one, but I won’t read this author again. I dislike reading a book where things are left open and if you want to know what happens you MUST read the next book.

Again, a lot of thoughts of lust on Delaney’s part but no sex and the F-bomb was used 2 times.

As to the narration: Once again, Khristine Hvam does a wonderful job on the voices and reads with great feeling.

Whining should not be a plot device

The main character and her sisters are law enforcement officers in incredible circumstances with skills, however they whine incessantly. They are generally intelligent unless the author wants to advance the plot and then they turn quickly stupid. But in general it’s a good story line. I just wish the author and narrator would give the heroes some credit.

Great narrator

The narration by Khristine Hvam was really great. I would listen to her again. The story for my taste was ok. It’s just preference. To me it was a train wreck you couldn’t look away from. I am not fond of strong female leads who are just stupid and bratty. She is a chief sheriff officer who never locks her house (even though she was shot in her driveway), never seems to have her gun when she needs it, has been training with her father for years to take on the supervisory role over humans/creatures/gods yet never seems to have read the manuals, and the list goes on. In this book she seems a lil bit better in her role than book 1. I often will read a book 2 in a series even if I wasn’t crazy about the first book to give a chance that things I disliked will be changed. But I’m not sure at this point if there was enough change in the weak female lead that I will read a book 3. The main concept/world that is created is great and unique so I do want to point that out. That held a lot of my attention and scored a lot of points.

Death was on your doorstep? -Myra

Book Two follows a slightly more serious mystery. This instantly makes it better than book one. The side characters are still hilarious and they are the best part of the book. The newest God to the town of Ordinary is the God of Death. And he is just what the doctor ordered.

The things that I disliked about the first book also continue, however it is at a slightly lower rate than the first book. The three sisters are still terrible police officers. They still fumble into discoveries instead of actually investigating anything. You might think that when the most important thing in their town goes missing, that they would drop everything to find it. Well you would be wrong. Nope, these women are horrible at being police. Instead they have a bit of fun and do some mundane tasks. It makes me wonder why the author chose to make them officers instead of just three low-magic witches. The sheriff, Delaney, reminds the reader several times that, "We are the Reeds!". But the Reed's really dont "do" anything. They are mostly symbolic. With the exception of when a god dies, which isnt often.

This is part of my cozy-read phase. Books leaning more on the humorous and not too serious.

Not much you can say about Kristine Hvam's narration other than great.