Sarah Gailey

This was a fun, quick read, made all the more enjoyable by reading with friends. I'm generally a fan of Gailey's style, so I expected to enjoy this and my expectation was met. I enjoyed Ivy, the main character, and her snark. I was kept guessing by the mystery right up until the end and Gailey did a great job of making me feel sus about pretty much every character.

The ending, however, was pretty weak. Not the reveal of who the murderer is, but what happened afterwards. The more I thought about it, the less it made sense for Ivy to act the way she did. It felt a little rushed and sloppy, compared to the rest of the book. It was still fun to read though, so only 1 star off for the bad ending.… (mere)

Series Info/Source: This is the second book in the River of Teeth duology. I borrowed this on audiobook from the library.

Thoughts: I enjoyed parts of this second book in the River of Teeth series. The characters are a fun group and unique and interesting to read about. I enjoy the premise of Hippos running feral on the Mississippi, and enjoyed the tamed hippos as well.

This book starts up shortly after the first one ended. Our original group of characters is scattered across the Mississippi. They are stuck trying to survive feral hippos and other conniving outlaws as they hope to group back together.

I did continue to enjoy the premise and the characters here. However, this book doesn't do a great job of resolving the main point of the story and the pacing was all over the place. This novella spends most of its time bringing the characters back together that were torn apart in the first book. There are a lot of POVs that we read from and it was just too much for this little novella. The beginning seems slow because of this and everything feels pretty unresolved...in fact the original problem they were trying to solve seems even worse by the end!

I listened to this on audiobook and the audiobook was well done. The narration is fun to listen to and the characters voices are well done. I would recommend listening to on audiobook if you enjoy audiobooks.

My Summary (3.5/5): Overall, the above complaints aside, this was a fun romp in a hippo infested wild-west America and it is short, so it isn't a huge time commitment to read. If you enjoyed the first book, I would recommend this. If a strange alternate wild west with hippos sounds intriguing to you, I would say give the series a shot. It's not a huge time commitment and it's fun.… (mere)