The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling – – mystery

In The Casual Vacancy, a local councilman in a small town dies, which leads to the whole town going downhill when his council seat comes up for re-election.


Unfortunately, I wasn’t over the moon about this book. I love J.K. Rowling. I love Harry Potter, but this was not a rock it out of the park best seller. The book had its moments and I found that I liked some of the characters, but most were petty and down right mean and it was hard to really find one character to sort of root for and get behind. I understand that all people have flaws and that, in a sense, made this book very realistic, however, these people had too many flaws! When you start wishing for characters to die, there has to be a problem somewhere.

The one character I did like was Krystal, but I thought her story got sucked up and ruined in tragedy. The whole book was a tragedy from my perspective. Every one seemed to crumble in one way or another.

There’s really not much I can say about the book. It read quickly, which was good because it was long, but there were a lot of different perspectives to keep track of. In the beginning, it took me awhile to remember people’s names and who they were. After a while, though, I got the hang of all the townsfolk and all their dirty little secrets.