Summerset

A Harbor Secret, Book 4)

By: Kristie Dickinson

Narrated by: Jeannie Sheneman

Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

Harbor Springs, the epitome of purity, innocence, and safety, forever lost that image when, in 1968, a family was brutally murdered in their summer home. To this day, the Sheriff's Office classifies this as a cold case, and the prosecutor refuses to close the file. Nearly every year-round resident has a different theory as to who committed the crime that has been featured on TV shows, web sites, podcasts, YouTube, and in numerous books. Now, upon the 50th anniversary of the unsolved mystery, Kylie, Jason, and Cupcake set out to discover the truth.

Inspired by a true story.

©2021 Kristie Dickinson (P)2021 Kristie Dickinson

Twists and turns

I enjoyed most of this book and it kept my attention throughout. Being somewhat familiar with the setting if the story, made it mor interesting. However, I was unprepared for the graphic representation’s of the murders. It was well written and clever in how the story was told. The narrator is easy to listen to and did a good job differentiating between characters, especially when there were many characters in a “scene”.
I would listen to another book by Kristie Dickinson and read by Jeannie Sheneman.

An enjoyable story despite some narrative issues

MASSIVE thanks to the author, who provided a free copy of the audiobook for me to listen to and review.

SPOILERS

I liked this book in a general sense, loved revisiting the characters and exploring the mystery, but I got pretty confused the first time I listened; I traced the interwoven vines better the second time. The narrative was as problematic as Leviathan's was, but in different ways; here the issues are more narrative- and timeline- related than character-related.

The biggest issue that caused most of the confusion—aside from the plethora of “Rob” names, though I think that was deliberate—was Kylie's imagined circumstances involving Baker and Matthews. The first time I listened I missed the fact that Kylie was only theorizing, so I was really lost. Depicting a theory might work in a visual medium, like in heist movies when we watch the heist unfold as the characters explain the plan in voiceover, but it did not work here. That should have been limited to Kylie saying she thought two convicts might have been involved; did the reader really need to know more than that?

Removing the depiction of Kylie's convict theory and the unnecessary POVs therein would have helped cut down on head-hopping, but in this book head-hopping issues were actually more about sequence than amount and ties into timeline issues. The 1967-68 timeline needed an overhaul to shift the focus a little and unfold the story in a more emotional way. It would have worked better if mostly linear, perhaps interspersed with moments from the detective’s POV as he investigated, though I’m not sure how necessary those were. We could have watched Livvy and Richie meet, fall in love, and hang out with Mark and Linda; could have watched Jim deal with Dick at work and while Dick talked about his ambitions, establishing the freemason aspect sooner because that seemed to get pulled out of someone’s behind at the last minute and sounded crazier than any of the other theories people had. It would have all built to the inevitable climax, the murders. Yes, the result was already foregone, and it’s really not much of a mystery that jealous and psychotic Jim was responsible, so the human aspect is what Dickinson should have leaned into. The primary mystery would have been the surprising ways those murders impacted the lives of the people connected, then and now, rather than who killed them. Dickinson was halfway there because the story’s twist was human aspect rather than whodunit.

On the character front, Kylie came across much better here than in the last book, though I'm afraid I still don't like her as much I initially did in the first two books of the series. I acknowledge the efforts she made to empathize with others, particularly her mother, and I actually agree that her mother still acted selfishly despite her troubles (I loved the juicy drama of their relationship and the plot surrounding it), but Kylie nevertheless came across as rather self-interested/-centered herself. It seemed that her greatest concern was about how things affected her or about how she felt about something. She isn't a horrible person by any means, but I do think Jason deserves better. He is way more into their relationship than she is and seems to make more effort toward it, which makes her comment at the end about going legit crazy if he died ring hollow. By the way, four books in and we know absolutely nothing about Jason aside from his being the fire chief and in love with Kylie. He’s not much more than a plot device at this point, and maybe not even that.

I like Judy a lot as a character in general, but I cringed hard when Judy showed up with a gun and every apparent intent to shoot and kill Olivia. Many of us threaten violence as a way of expressing our fury, of venting it, but a minuscule percentage have any intention of following through, and an even smaller percentage actually do. I would have never expected Judy to actually follow through with her threat, and it seemed way out of character—and way too dark for the tone of the modern-day storyline—for her to try. I’d have loved Judy to confront Olivia and give her a well-deserved dressing-down, but not actually shoot her. Also, it said that there was a gunshot, but we hear nothing more about it. I doubt Judy actually shot Olivia, especially considering we don’t hear anything about Olivia being injured, so what did she shoot at? And why? Also, did she actually get arrested? There were jokes about it but they didn’t help clarify fact from fiction.

The historian dude seemed superfluous, and somewhat related to him, I’m not completely clear on how the murders remained unsolved. He seemed to put everything together easily enough, as did Kylie. Some civilians had their own theories, sure, but the police obviously thought it was Jim. We’re even led to believe that they’d been coming to arrest Jim, and he committed suicide before they could. So… how was it not a closed case? Because they didn’t get a confession? Because a couple small, arguably irrelevant details remained a mystery? The overall conclusion was a bit murky, especially considering Robere (sp?) Roberts was real and no one realized it. I both loved that and hated it; I can't decide if it was clever or a desperate attempt at a misdirect.

One thing that was clever and fascinating was how Dickinson introduced several theories as to what happened to the Robinsons and showed the reader different meanings for clues simply by changing perspective, such as why the wife's legs were bare.

Lastly, while Dickinson is a talented writer, she has room for improvement, particularly in deciding when to show and when to tell. Aside from Kylie’s convict theory, a couple examples:

Expository language like “She had a surprised expression on her face” instead of something demonstrative like “Her brows shot up to her hairline.”

“‘Was he a good shot?’ The man shrugged to indicate he was just average.” Not only is there an ambiguous pronoun problem here, but it’s also not necessary to exposit what the shrug meant. If you want to distinguish it from meaning “I don’t know,” then include a few words of dialogue to clarify. Dickinson might have even done that, I don’t recall, but if she did, it isn’t necessary to do both.

Overall, the narrative needed some developmental and line-editing, but it was enjoyable despite its issues and I look forward to Kylie’s next mystery, if indeed Dickinson writes another installment to the series.