booking_along's Reviews (1.97k)

this was may favorite of the whole trilogy! 

the writing was fantastic! so many great sentences, things that were being said and how they were formulated? fantastic! no other word for it.

the characters and how they worked together was great and i enjoyed the romance aspects of it as well. 

i also felt the supernatural element of this entire series finally actually accumulated enough to make sense to me so that i could enjoy it. 


i hate wanting to say this surprised me with how much i enjoyed and actually really liked it from start to finish but i think that’s the best way to say it. 

with the other two books i struggled at one point or another -either the supernatural elements weren’t explained enough for me or i felt like since its under 200 pages i didn’t get to know the characters enough to actually care or what was happening just wasn’t what i wished would happen with those characters- something always made me go “mhm. it’s good but i didn’t really like it too much. i just wish i did.”

which might sound stupid but i think a lot of other people also experience going into a book/series wanting desperately for it to work for them.
i heard so many great things about this series and especially the first book and it just wasn’t what it was for most other readers for me.


BUT this book?! this book was that -it came and grabbed me and  it just worked so well for me. 


did the enjoyment of this book makes me want to reread the trilogy to see if it works better for me know and already knowing what to expect? yes absolutely! 
i can’t right now but i will reread this entire series at one point soonish and i hope to love it more or at least enjoy this last book at least as much as this time around! 


fantastic last book- even better book in its own and i can’t even say anything else but fantastic! 

this is a fun book. 

it really has a similar tone to the tv show and the characters are recognizable from the show so props to the author for actually managing to write … well basically well done fanfiction that was officially published. 
(by the way that’s not a negative at all, love fanfiction and read way to many of them for decades now and would never say anything negative about them!)


honestly the only negative i have about this is that natalie is not a great person. 
she tries to appear as if she’s this helpful and nice person but she is incredibly unthankful and quite often disrespectful. 
while she recognizes there Monk is special and his behavior is as well, and she loves being part of solving the crime, everything else about her job is treated as if she didn’t know what she would get herself into or has to “deal” with as part of her job and as if it’s a huge inconvenience for her. 
she mentions quite often how Monks behavior is too much or inconvenient or disruptive or disrespectful but she puts herself in situations where those things can appear that why simply because Monk is who he is and he can’t change that. 
if you let someone with OCD stay in your house -i am sorry but what do you expect? them not to clean and rearrange? it’s a compulsion! if they couldn’t do it and stop they would! 
you can’t complain about it and how it’s not what you want but let’s face it if you decide to let someone like Monk stay with you it comes with positives and negatives (you will never have a cleaner place then after he was there but everything will be rearranged to his specifications).
also she complains about having to clean her house (understandable) but then also complains when someone else like monk does it for her? (what? why that’s the cleanest her place ever been!)

Natalie’s entire job is knowing Monk so why is she surprised or reacts as if she couldn’t have seen it happen and actually complains that Monk cleans up a half eaten grill cheese from under her couch (which yuck! i am so with Monk on that that if she has stuff like that in her living spaces she needed a desperate deep clean!). 

and while i have no clue what Monk is paying her she certainly has enough money to not only keep her house and car without problem but also put her kid in all kinds of after school activities but also very often pay a babysitter -so really how badly paid can she be? 
she waited tables and bartended before i don’t think she made more there! 
and really her job is secure - a guy like Monk won’t fire her if not for extreme circumstances because he would never want that change in his life! the jobs she listed has having done before she could never know if she had them next month!
again what is she complaining about? 

and look i am not saying that a guy like monk wouldn’t drive everyone up a wall sometimes but complaining about the typical behavior seems a bit much. 

Natalie has some small good moments but between how she describes and reacts to Monk as well as some other people throughout this book she comes over as a completely spoiled and ungrateful brat. 

and while i wish the author took some liberties with natalie as a character - if i remember the show right he nailed her character and behavior perfectly! 


the rest of the book was great though. 
the mysteries where well done and i loved how it all come together and how it was solved! 

the writing was great the length of the book perfect and the entire thing felt like an episode! 

very well done! 

overall this was a good collection. 

i personally would have loved it more if the long walk story -which is separated throughout this book by being spaced out between the other stories by the other stories - would have been given in one so that it wouldn’t have taken me out of that story by reading an unrelated other short story by an other other with other writing style and focus and plot only to get back to the long walk story over and over again.

that was honestly my biggest issue and i would recommend if you are able to either read the other stories before or after completely reading through the long walk chapters and reading that as one instead of in the split up way it’s published in this book.

but maybe that’s just me and others love coming back to a familiar story and continuing on with it after another story. 


i enjoyed this overall and would say it’s a good collection. 

i didn’t love any of the story and didn’t think its any of the others best works but its a good book anyways and worth a read.