A Hard Day for a Hangover by Darynda Jones

Title: A Hard Day for a Hangover

Author: Darynda Jones

Series: Sunshine Vicram #3

Not the conclusion I expected—or wanted

Thank you to Darynda Jones and St. Martin’s Press for allowing me to read a free ARC in exchange for an honest review. Also thank you to Kejana Alaya for providing the ARC.

It’s about goddamn time. We could have had this book a year ago, but the publisher wanted to let us stew for a while. Marketing, scheduling, I don’t care why. Paired with Moonlight being delayed for over a year now, and toss in no progress updates on anything from Jones, except to further delay Moonlight, I got pretty salty. Graveside Bar and Grill was lackluster and hardly appeased my appetite.

So, was Hangover worth the wait?

Meh.

I mean, it was fun. Jones’s books are always ostensibly fun because of all the humor. Beneath the humor, though, there were problems. Actually within the humor, too—the characters’ pathological need to make a joke out of everything wears thin when the reader is waiting for the plot to advance, for something besides banter to happen. Also a couple of the jokes were overused—”no idea why” (that really got annoying, especially when I started to mentally explain why to the character) as well as hearts bursting out of eyes, usually Auri’s.

Also, it was ironic (or spot-on?) to see this epigraph “If I’m ever murdered, feel comfort in knowing that I ran my mouth until the bitter end. – Journal Entry: Aurora Vicram” not long after she literally, stupidly, clichedly did just that: The perp was about to shoot her and asked if she had any last words. She couldn’t resist being a smartass and said, “Duck?” and the perp was supposedly too busy puzzling over that to realize they were about to be bludgeoned and incapacitated. I hated that. Not because Auri survived, that was great, but because she alerted them to the attack. Why in god’s name would you do that? What if the perp actually did duck? If she’d said something random, like, “Did you know fruit are plant ovaries?” just to throw the perp off, I wouldn’t have been so irritated, but she really should have just kept. Her mouth. Shut.

Okay. *relieved sigh* With that off my chest, let’s move on.

Randi – It was nice to see Jones didn’t forget about Randi, but I don’t believe she explained why the department had a live-in raccoon (I don’t remember from previous books, I mean it’s been two years since I read Chardonnay), and I don’t believe we were given closure on Randi, either. Did the coon continue to stay at the station? Did they release it into the wild? Take it to a wildlife rehab facility?

Doug – I could have missed something in the end, but I don’t remember closing the book on Doug, either. They figured out what happened—which was ridiculously convoluted—but nothing was done about him.

Wanda – Why did she need to be Cruz’s long-lost grandmother? Why did he need to discover biological ties? What was wrong with him having a family in Auri’s family and the town? It totally undercut what she said. I did not like that development. What was the point? What did the story, the characters gain?

DD&SS – We didn’t come full circle on this at all. A conflict was presented and never revisited. Sun and her parents came to an understanding, but that was all.

We only saw Hailey once, never saw Jimmy. And hey, never got closure on Quincy and Hailey. Did they go all the way? Did they get an HEA? Was her shop successful?

There was a sad lack of Levi and Cruz. Cruz didn’t really have anything to do this time around other than be Auri’s love interest, so lack of him was understandable, but the lack of Levi was kinda weird. This book was supposed to be the culmination of his and Sun’s intense will-they-won’t-they romance, and it was an afterthought. Oh yeah, that mystery that was super important to the overarching plot and Sun’s character, the one that the first two books revolved around? Apparently it was all solved in book two. Levi pouted off-screen for the first half of this one, then he and Sun finally sat down and talked for five minutes, and voila, happy family. All that was left was to fill in Auri and her parents (Quincy seemed to already know?). Their overall reaction? “Cool, let’s plan the wedding.” Don’t get me wrong, it was nice to see Levi and Sun finally get together and live HEA, but that whole plot thread was incredibly anticlimactic.

As to the main plot—where was it? Clay was supposed to be the big bad, there was supposed to be a mafia, it was supposed to be this big showdown between Levi and his last remaining evil uncle. Never happened. That got shoved completely off stage by a plot featuring someone else. The climax was quite topical, as it was adjacent to a school shooting—trigger warning—and it was also very intense, best part of the damn book, but . . . I wanted a Ravinder showdown.

And the “main” plot, the one that shoved Clay’s aside, was kind of pathetic. Screw Sun, Auri did most of the investigating while Sun ran her ass off dealing with all those superfluous subplots. Tying in the other victims was cool, as was calling in the dogs to find the other body, but aside from that it was mostly Auri digging through socials on her phone. I’m sure social media introduced a whole new and valuable way to investigate crimes, but the process isn’t very exciting to read about. We never even spoke to the victim who kicked it all off, we never saw her regain consciousness. How did things turn out for her?

I could whine about wanting an epilogue, but it seems silly to ask for an epilogue considering all the loose ends.

Overall, I’m disappointed, and I’m so, so sad to give a bad review. For years now I’ve observed that Jones has a serious problem with throwing in too many subplots and not paying due diligence to the story elements that matter most. She makes a mess of a cake, then ices it with humor. It’s so frustrating, because you can tell she’s got major writing talent. She just needs help focusing the story. A developmental editor—or a better one—is badly needed.

I have no idea what’s next for Jones, and right this moment I’m having trouble caring. I’m very, very scared for Beep’s trilogy.

P.S. – I can’t get over that the publisher wants this to be a holiday release. The book has nothing to do with the holidays. At all. It’s set at the end of the school year. It’s very much a spring/summer read.

P.P.S. – Auri says Grandma has a book series about a female grim reaper who’s in love with the son of [Satan]. Yeah, haha, cute—but wait, in the first book didn’t Sunshine talk to some guy in a bar who implied that Charley was alive in Sunshine’s universe? Now she’s just a book series? I’m confused.

P.P.P.S. – If Auri was alerted to something going on at her house by the fact that the light was on in the kitchen and she recognized Grandpa through the window, how could Grandpa have been “cast in shadows” once Auri arrived? I don’t think it’s necessarily a continuity issue, it just doesn’t make sense as described.

P.P.P.P.S. – I loved the shit out of Grandpa.

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