Title: The Last Time I Saw Her
Author: Karen Robards
Series: Dr. Charlotte Stone #4
Not a stellar example of Robards’ writing skills, but a fantastic ending to the series!
I give this five stars because I love Karen Robards’ books and particularly loved the Dr. Charlotte Stone series, and I’m just glad to finally know how it ends! I’m satisfied with it. If you’re a Robards fan, you’ll love it. If you’re new to Robards, I recommend starting this series at the beginning, but she is very much worth reading.
That said, I have to admit this wasn’t a perfect book. What bothered me the most was how redundant it was. It seemed like Robards described what Michael and Hughes looked like over and over and over again, as well as told us how Charlie felt about Michael versus Tony versus Hughes over and over and over again–there were just things that got brow-beaten into the reader. On a related note, I felt rather patronized while reading. Not because Robards had to recap the events of the previous books to make this one relevant–that was necessary, and she did a fair job of it. But there were passages, mostly Charlie’s thought processes I believe, where she’d take a whole long paragraph explaining something, like a why or how, then right after would write something to the effect of “In short,….” or “In other words,…” and would say the same thing in five words or less with more humor, or maybe chagrin. I guess it confused me that she felt what she was explaining was so hard to comprehend–or maybe difficult for the reader to agree with or relate to–that she had to give it a thorough description, then a tagline, if you will, in case we didn’t understand. I don’t recall Robards doing anything like that in other books, she usually trusts the reader to be smart enough to follow along, and it really bothered me.
Charlie and Michael may not seem to be quite the same as one remembers from the first three, but I think that’s because we’re seeing them after they’ve been developed and have grown/matured as people–or…ghost, in Michael’s case. You know what I mean. Charlie remained smart, discounting her “savior complex,” as Michael says, except she did seem rather obtuse about his secret. I feel that she could have figured that out on her own, or at least made a pretty good guess. But everyone else seemed consistent, Tam, Tony, even Buzz and Lena, though I craved more of them. Maybe I’ve gotten too used to Susan Elizabeth Phillips, but I wish there had been an epilogue a short while into the future, maybe several months or a couple of years, so we could see how everyone had moved on after the tumultuous few months they’d just had. Though while we might be curious about how things turned out for them, we get closure on everyone except Tony.
As for the plot, it wrapped up all of the loose threads that I can think of, from how an inmate was able to kill Michael to Buzz and Lena’s HEA. The book focused on the “What’s going on at the prison?” question for the most part, but gave a decent amount of screen time to “How was Michael framed?” The Hughes plot twist was intriguing, if ultimately unimportant. Charlie’s ability was acknowledged, if not fully utilized. The part where they confront the real Southern Slasher was rushed, convenient, lazy, and a bit confusing, even for someone who’s read the other three books. I won’t criticize it too much, because I can’t think of how else it could have gone off the top of my head, but I think Robards could have put a little more effort into solving that mystery. I wouldn’t have been adverse to a longer book.
I have to say, though, that I expected the “What’s going on at the prison?” question to be answered with something paranormal. I can’t get to my copy of the third book, it’s buried in storage (didn’t think that one through, did I?) but it seemed to me that Robards set up the prison to be some kind of hellmouth–I’m not sure if she actually used that word–and I expected more paranormal trouble to happen there. But as far as we know, it was all just hypocritical, jack*ss prison guards.
There are two things I wished she’d have acknowledged in relation to Hughes. One, how lucky for Michael that Hughes was in top shape so he could scale a cliff with his bare hands! And two–if Michael was using Hughes’ body, which appeared to be fully functional despite Michael’s invasion, couldn’t he have gotten Charlie pregnant with Hughes’ baby?!?! I kept waiting for Charlie to ask, but in uncharacteristic idiocy, it didn’t even occur to her out of simple curiosity. I didn’t expect it to be a problem, Robards would have explained it away somehow, but I still feel a little cheated. It drove me crazy every time they had sex! It’s still driving me crazy!
Speaking of sex, Charlie and Michael’s sex scene was super-duper sexy! 😉
For all the issues I just described, I really did enjoy this book. The characters were lovable (well, except the serial killers) and Robards didn’t take the easy way out on any of her plots–or at least not the obvious easy way out–which kept it interesting. There was a good mix of sex, humor, drama, and suspense, though the predominant theme was romance, as it should be. It was so, so satisfying to finally see Charlie and Michael given a lifetime together that I cried like a baby!
Hopefully Robards will continue writing about Charlie and Michael–on her Facebook page she kept saying this book would conclude “this arc” of their story, and I personally asked her if that meant we’d see them again, and she said she was thinking about it. Probably depends on how well this book does business-wise. I don’t know what plot she’d throw them into, but I’d be all for continuing the story!
