I thought that this is going to be quite a quick BotW post this week – because there’s not a lot that I can say about my pick without giving too much away. And that’s because Angelina’s Choice is the fifth in the Hobson and Choi series – and I have rules about giving away too much about running series because it Spoils Things For Everyone. But actually it turns out that I have a lot to say. Who knew.
And before I get to the plot – let’s just address the elephant in the room – yes that’s a blurb from me on the cover of this. It’s from my review of the second book when that was a BotW last year. Nick Bryan asked me if he could use it on the new book and I was delighted to say yes. And that hasn’t influenced my choice of it for this week – I bought my own copy of Angelina’s Choice and it genuinely was the thing I enjoyed the most of the books that I finished last week. And so, to the review.
Angelina’s still on work experience at Hobson’s detective agency and having spent the whole summer helping solve other people’s mysteries, now she wants the answers to the mystery that brought her to the agency in the first place: who are her real parents. But Hobson seems to be mostly too busy with other cases and so she’s doing a lot of the investigating herself. But will she likes what she finds out – and will knowing actually do more harm than good. Hobson meanwhile is investigating a trendy online taxi service and finds himself in dark waters. Again.
I love the way that Hobson and Angelina interact with each other. She may be the teenager, but in some ways she can be the more emotionally intelligent one. In this book we do see the limits to her maturity again – and despite the fact that she’s already investigated a couple of very serious crimes, I think it’s this book where she realises the real gravity of what she’s been doing and what she’s involved in. And Hobson’s doing his best to keep the messy grownup things in his life away from her – and shield her from things he thinks that she might regret knowing later.
You will definitely get the most out of this if you’ve read the books that precede it. The through lines have been building since the start, but at this point it really does feel like it’s hurtling towards something irrevocable. There are familiar characters popping back up – and at least one of the solutions to the previous books is going to be spoilt for you if you read this one first. Consider yourself warned. And considering how this one ends, I really hope that the next book comes soon and we don’t have to wait two years to find out what happens next.
You should be able to get hold of this from all the usual sources, but this is one of those occasions when I want to give another big plug to Big Green Bookshop. I wouldn’t be reading this series if it wasn’t for that shop – I came across them actually in store when I pootled up there after work one day mostly to buy one of their tote bags. And because it’s nearly impossible for me to go into a bookshop and not buy a book (or two) I bought myself the first Vinyl Dectective book – which I’d had on my list for a while and happened across these on the shelf nearby. And so it was a very successful trip all around. Big Green will take orders over twitter and post books out for you and they run a fab Buy a Stranger a Book twitter thing on Wednesdays. But if you want an ebook version, you can get them on Kindle and Kobo – but definitely start from the beginning of the series with The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf which is free on both of those platforms just to make it a total no-brainer.
Happy Reading!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 