More of a strong 2.5 or 2.75. It was alright. Took awhile to get going. Literally 100 pages before plot started happening. Now I remember that Charlaine Harris is more of a character writer. But the weirdness of the few people that live in Midnight, Texas was so shrouded in mystery we got more of their regular every day than about paranormal powers or fantasy characteristics. This was a lot less about that than the Sookie Stackhouse series was. There were more hints as to what everyone was towards the end of the book. Joe and Chuy kind of took me by surprise. Anyway, even the whodunit, the plot as it were turned out to be very mundane, if a bit surprising. The towns solution got me a little teary-eyed since it really was the only one but Harris rightfully included many of them having doubts and being unable to consent. What would any of us do in that situation. Another point to highlight how human they all are. They are so regular that I overestimated almost everyone's ages in the first part of the book. I swore they were all at least 10 years older, minus Lemuel. Anyway, that was a ramble. I am not invested but curious about the next book. So I'll pick it up randomly one day.