Holy Hell (Lillian Byrd Crime Series) (Volume 1) - Elizabeth Sims  

I was looking for something different to read after just ending a 4 1/2 month long reading challenge and searched the kindle unlimited options and found this series, and I am super excited!

The Lillian Byrd Crime series starts with this first book and we get to meet our titular character, Lillian Byrd.  She's a newspaper reporter in a small town outside of Detroit, just getting out of a relationship with her girlfriend, getting frustrated with her boss's son who keeps sexually harassing her.  

Well, she gets involved in this murder case, ends up going postal on her boss's son, loses her job, and falls back into bed with her ex.  And that's all just in the first few chapters!  What comes next is just an entertaining cozy mystery with a heroine I really enjoyed spending time with.

The mystery got to be a bit creepy but it was interesting.  Lillian couldn't seem to keep herself out of trouble, but the entire time, you couldn't help but root for her.  Things worked out in the end, but you just know she's not going to stay out of trouble for long.  

I really enjoyed this book and I will be adding more of the series to my Kindle Unlimited library ASAP.  I listened to this one on audio for most of the book only switching to reading when I couldn't listen.  The narrator, Dina Perlman, did an excellent job.  I will likely listen to the rest of the series since I enjoyed her narration so much.

I likely would not have found this series if I hadn't been looking on Kindle Unlimited.  I've been a member for a few months now, and I have found some great authors.  I've been really pleased with it.

Something funny happened to me as I was reading "Allegiant".

I didn't go in with a completely unbiased mind. I hadn't enjoyed "Divergent" or "Insurgent", and, as an added bonus, I'd also spoiled myself thoroughly about the ending (I'm the kind of person who clicks on the spoiler tag. Curiosity is my middle name.) I had a ton of preconceived notions, and I thought that this would be a fairly straightforward, for-the-sake-of-research-and-goals type of read.

It didn't turn out to be like that. Because, halfway through the book, I had this thought, and once it took root, suddenly I saw everything (the whole series, not just this book) in a completely different light. I daresay it changed my entire opinion of it. It started off with me muttering about how Tris never struck me as a particularly interesting narrator, and how she was so annoyingly perfect, and how she didn't learn anything. And then I thought:

What if this wasn't Tris' story at all? What if it's Four's?

Content note: Discussion about abuse, sexism and gun culture under the cut. 

Also, spoilers.

Despite what I think about Daughter of the Forest (and publishers splitting books into two) I really, really dig what the French have done here.