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annathepiperThe fifth (and to my knowledge, last--I don't know if any more are forthcoming) Lily Bard book is almost more about developments in Lily's life than it is an actual crime. This is not to say that there isn't one in Shakespeare's Counselor, because there is, and a pretty warped one at that. Our heroine, now that her relationship with her lover Jack has progressed to a point where she's willing to take his suggestion to start addressing some of the issues in her life, joins a rape survivor therapy group. And is shortly thereafter confronted with a dead body, violently killed, found where her group has been meeting. At the same time, Lily learns that the counselor running the group is apparently herself getting stalked, struggling with serious issues of her own even as she's trying to help them all.
Quite intense stuff there, and Harris does a good job of handling the ramifications of her plot points in her compact page count. I found it a little odd jumping to this one after recently reading the first Lily Bard (in which her original backstory is told in detail)... and yet, reading the books so close together did show a nice story arc of Lily dealing with what she's suffered as her life in Shakespeare has progressed through the five books. On the other hand, I'm not sure whether I also needed a subplot of Lily suffering a miscarriage in this book. It's handled well, like the survivor group issues, and yet it made reading it a bit too... much.
So, I do still recommend this as well as the series as a whole, but with a cautionary note that the plotlines may be a bit triggery for anyone with history in these areas. Three and a half stars.
Quite intense stuff there, and Harris does a good job of handling the ramifications of her plot points in her compact page count. I found it a little odd jumping to this one after recently reading the first Lily Bard (in which her original backstory is told in detail)... and yet, reading the books so close together did show a nice story arc of Lily dealing with what she's suffered as her life in Shakespeare has progressed through the five books. On the other hand, I'm not sure whether I also needed a subplot of Lily suffering a miscarriage in this book. It's handled well, like the survivor group issues, and yet it made reading it a bit too... much.
So, I do still recommend this as well as the series as a whole, but with a cautionary note that the plotlines may be a bit triggery for anyone with history in these areas. Three and a half stars.