Too early for Worst Line of 2019? “My boobs looked nice and moundy.”

I bought this book at a going-out-of-business sale at a used bookstore, which is sad thing #1, and then the book itself was sad thing #2. It is TERRIBLE. It’s one of those urban fantasy series that are all the rage, and it has a nonsensical plot, unlikeable and derivative characters, and the dreadful writing. I had to put it down in December so I could finish it in January, just so I could tell y’all about it.

Zoe is a wraith: she can astrally project herself out of her body, and uses this skill as a (very whiny) private eye of sorts. She sends her astral self through walls and such to listen in on secret conversations, then reports back to her clients (secret internet clients whose names she doesn’t know, but who threaten her regularly). She’s got a crush on a cop I kept expecting to be evil, but he’s not that interesting. He doesn’t believe in ghosts, so she hasn’t told him about her secret life, or about the ghosts who help out in her mother’s psychic/tea shop, or anything at all about her real life. Also, she can’t talk, because of some disaster that happened in book one, which Wilson references a lot but never explains.

The plot had potential, or I wouldn’t have bought it. Zoe is investigating a crooked politician, but everywhere the politician goes, a ghost-hunting group is there guarding him and trying to catch her astral self on camera. So she has to find out what the bad guy is up to, but also how he knows about her and what the Ghost Facers are going to do if they catch her. Then some people get murdered, and her hippie medium mom disappears (medium in that she sees ghosts; I believe she is of average size), then her best friend/sidekick maybe betrays her, then some invisible slug things she calls Daemons show up and possess people, then her cop boyfriend turns out to have an estranged wife who gets murdered, and all these nine million extra plot points pop up and go NOWHERE.

Zoe chooses poorly whenever she’s given two options of any sort. She’s a brat, she fights with people who are trying to help her, and she pouts like a toddler when things don’t go her way. I didn’t want her to win, and I don’t care what happens to her in the next book. Except maybe the boring cop will finally turn out to be evil. Then Zoe can pout and whine some more.

Some choice quotes, because OMG THE PAINFUL WRITING:

• While going out-of-body while she’s undercover at a fancy party, and looking back at her sleeping self: “The dress was definitely a keeper. Even my boobs looked nice and moundy in the tight bodice.”
• Describing somebody’s outfit: “His feet were socked with brown wool.”
• “Pissed off didn’t even begin to cover the range of emotions that tumbled about in my head.”
• “I frowned, felt my fairly dark but carefully tweezed eyebrows knit over my nose.”