I'll admit to an obvious bias. The entire "quirky female teenager with out-of-place hobby falls and manages to hook guy supposedly out of reach who, too, has a quirky out-of-place hobby" (am I losing you?) trope? Love it. This is probably why the main issue many seem to have with the book - the voice of our female protagonist - doesn't seem to affect me. She should be bouncy, all-over-the-place. That's who she is. Frankly, I kind of loved it. When our protag was excited, I was excited. When she was sad, I felt like the older sister who had to see her through to the end.

Unfortunately, even with the odds skewed in its favor on my part, this book had just a few too many nails in its coffin.

Issue one is not the most obvious. The pacing in this book takes a sudden turn from jog to full-on leap, especially at the very end. For the most part, Harris knew how to keep the story moving. We never lingered too long on a particular issue before it was either solved, resigned, or shown from a different perspective. This was a good thing - there weren't pages worth of dialogue bemoaning the main character's lack of friends, for example, which tends to be a persistent problem with this type of literature. While I won't spoil the end of the novel, I will say that it comes from absolutely nowhere. The ebook itself isn't that long, so I suppose that this was to be expected, but the fact that the mystery revealed itself instead of the characters solving it themselves felt a little cheap and very, very rushed. Especially for a book priding itself on having a crime-solving, Nancy Drew feel. Didn't Nancy, you know, actually manage to figure out the majority of the case before her final confrontation with the "villain"? There's none of that here; the crime pertaining to the mystery of the dead girls is basically just a network of loose information none of the main characters seem to figure out.

Problem two is one that crime novels in general tend to have. The idiocy of the police is astounding. Again, no spoilers, but there's just too many coincidences obvious for the police to not be a bigger part of the overall story. It kind of stunk to see them relegated to the background, pretty much just there to stop our "meddling kids". There was a lot of potential for some great interaction between these two forces. Reading the synopses of other books in this series, it appears that this is no longer a problem, so that's at least good.

Problem three, the final one, is the persistent feeling of a "second book syndrome". As in, this book just feels like a massive lead-up to the second one in the series, which will far outshine it. Characters have to be introduced, backstories have to be established, quirks have to be polished. The pacing I mentioned before makes all of this bustle less pronounced, but it doesn't change the fact that it's bustle. Compounded to the fact that the story itself is so short, you walk away with the feeling that "Adventures in Funeral Crashing" was supposed to be just a massive launching pad for the series in general, not its own story. On the one hand, Harris did a great job with this, because, for all its flaws, I certainly do want to pick up this series. But on the other, it's quite a shame.

Is it worth getting? Considering that it's free, I would give a definite "yes". If you end up not liking it, you won't have wasted much time with it, considering that it clocks in at one hundred something pages (a lot of the end is just a preview for the next book, pushing it to two hundred ten pages). And if you're like me, and see the seed of something here, you might consider picking up the sequel. ( )

This is such a wonderful book for teenagers. A mystery romance with lots of action. It was the first book that I read by this author, but I enjoyed every minute of it. It seems there is hope for the awkward social outcasts out there. They do sometimes get the popular guy! ( )

Kait Lennox loves a funeral, now put that together with a little detecting, a boy and a mystery.

This was a fast, fun read. All age groups can read and enjoy this title. I am looking to read more from Milda Harris. ( )

Author's guest post at my blog:
http://bookfare.blogspot.com/2015/11/foodfic-please-welcome-milda-harris.html

Since her mother's death, Kait has found solace attending funerals. Any funeral will do. She calls this funeral crashing and loves to hear people telling the stories about the deceased. When she attends the funeral of a young girl who overdosed, she is surprised to find out that this girl was the half sister of the cutest guy in school, Ethan Ripley. Ethan is curious and questions Kait about how she knew Liz, Kait has to fess up that she really did not know here. Ethan is disappointed because he thinks his sister was murdered and hoped Kait knew something. Some other girls have recently died of overdoses. Kait soon agrees with him and they begin to investigate.

This was a really fun book. Kait is good at investigating despite being constantly distracted by Ethan's silky hair. The mystery was pretty good and there was some action and suspense. The love story (such as there is) is sweet. This book would be appropriate for teens and tweens. It does have some language but I found it consistent with kids the age of our heroine. I am looking forward to the next book in the series. ( )