I don’t know if it was mood, book hangover from a bunch of fantastic books, or craft problems, but it took a lot of effort for me to finish Fossil Feud. Fossil Feud was my first book from Maggie North, and my unfamiliarity with the author’s style might have been part of the problem. There were parts that I enjoyed a lot, but I ended up wanting more and less. My biggest frustration was with the love interest, Dr. James Smithson. He never felt real to me, so though he said and did things that should have been romantic, I never felt it.
Ripley Adams left her Ph.D. program after her then boyfriend tried to steal her research and called her ethics into question. A few years later, she’s running a privately funded dig site and the results will go to a private collector, not a museum or research institution. She’s approached by James because he thinks her ex is about to present a fraud at a paleontology conference he is chairing and wants Ripley’s help to prove the fraud. There are a few things happening in the story – the importance of the wing Ripley is excavating; the investigation into evil ex Max’s fraud; and Ripley trying to balance her personal and professional needs with her growing relationship with James.
I wish more time and attention had been given to Ripley and James’s investigation. I would have loved more of a dive into how Max could create and pass off a fraud as legitimate research. I wish North had given James some pov chapters. I felt like he existed solely to facilitate Ripley’s needs or thwart them, all while being kind of quirky and wearing slutty little glasses. Slutty little glasses are great, but they aren’t a personality. I swooned more about secondary characters Cara and Griff’s budding romance than Ripley and James.
Reader/reviewer and author discourse on social media is cyclical and the reviews are educational for authors topic has come up again recently. So I want to say that I hope Maggie North never sees my review and if she does, I hope she never thinks about it. Because my review is subjective and I have nothing useful to say about the craft of writing. I have opinions, which are often outliers, so you can’t even use them to track reader trends.
I received this as an advance reader copy from Dell and NetGalley. My opinions are my own, freely and honestly given.
