Shakespeare's Counselor (Lily Bard Mystery, Book 5) by Charlaine Harris

Shakespeare's Counselor by Charlaine Harris


Synopsis
Cleaning woman and karate expert Lily Bard is a woman with a complicated past. Trying her best to cope with her terrifying memories and horrible nightmares, she decides to join a weekly group therapy session in her hometown of Shakespeare, Arkansas. At first, Lily can hardly believe the number of her fellow Shakespeareans that share her life experiences.

As it turns out, the group members' feelings aren't the only things that need sorting out -- they assemble for a session and find a woman dead, killed in bone-chilling fashion and deliberately left on display to send a twisted message. Who would commit such horrendous crime, and who is the intended recipient of the message?

Before long, Lily becomes embroiled in this disturbing murder and its aftermath, one in which the brutal killer's motives are entirely unclear. The truth is, the situation has dredged up more than a few of her own terrible secrets, and she may not be able to rest until she can untangle the who and why of this terrible crime. But can she accomplish this before the killer strikes again, and before her nightmares send her over the edge? Shakespeare's Counselor is the most complex and absorbing installment yet in Charlaine Harris's engaging, original, and more than slightly dark mystery series.

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Another great read in the Lily Bard Mystery series. I am sad to see this series end as I have really come to like Lily, but this book was a good last chapter. As Jack and Lily become more involved, Lily realizes that it is time to confront her feelings concerning her attack. She joins a support group where she not only makes some progress dealing with her own personal issues, but is faced with another murder mystery.

I really enjoyed this book because it really focused on Lily and Jack's relationship as well as Lily's emotional state. I would love to see more of this series, but know that realistically we probably won't. A shame since I think that there is a lot more that Jack and Lily could accomplish together!

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Shakespeare's Trollop (Lily Bard Mystery, Book 4) by Charlaine Harris

Shakespeare's Trollop by Charlaine Harris


Shakespeare, Arkansas, is home to endless back roads, historic buildings, colorful residents--and the occasional murder. It is also home to Lily Bard, the local karate expert/cleaning woman with a particular knack for finding skeletons in closets.

But when the local woman of ill repute is found murdered, being familiar with her dirty laundry could make Lily the next Shakespearean to die.

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Another great read in the Lily Bard Mystery series.

When Lily stumbles upon the body of Deedra Dean, she is thrown into the investigation of her murder. Lots of interesting characters as we get to know the residents of Shakespeare a little better. I figured out the who of the murder, but not the why. It was an interesting twist and I look forward to the next in the series. I am just sad that it is going to be the last one in this series.

I love where Jack and Lily's relationship is going.

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Shakespeare's Christmas (Lily Bard Mystery, Book 3) by Charlaine Harris

Shakespeare's Christmas by Charlaine Harris


ven in a sleepy Arkansas town, the holidays can be murder.

Lily Bard is going home for the holidays. More comfortable in baggy sweats than bridesmaid's frills, Lily isn't thrilled about attending her estranged sister's wedding. She has moved to Shakespeare, Arkansas, to start a new life, cleaning houses for a living, trying to forget the violence that once nearly destroyed her. Now she's heading back to home and hearth--just in time for murder.

The town's doctor and nurse have been bludgeoned to death at the office. And Lily's detective boyfriend suddenly shows up at her parents' door. Jack Leeds is investigating an eight-year-old kidnapping and the trail leads straight to Lily's hometown. It just might have something to do with the murders...and her sister's widowed fiancé. With only three days before the wedding, Lily must work fast to clean up the messy case before her sister commits...marriage!

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Another great read in the Lily Bard Mystery series. I read this one immediately following #2 in the series, Shakespeare's Champion and am glad that I did. This one takes up right where the second one left off with Lily and Jack forging a new relationship.



In this book, Lily heads home to attend her younger sister's wedding. This is a tense visit after years of absence following Lily's horrible attack a decade earlier. While dealing with the rift between herself and her family, the difficulty of encountering people who know about her past and a string of murders that seem to be tied to Lily's new boyfriend Jacks investigation, Lily is thrust into the middle of a mystery that may involve her soon to be brother in law.



Watching Lily work out the mystery, while working out her feelings for Jack makes for a great read. I love the path that she and Jack are taking and cannot wait to start on the next book in the series, Shakespeare's Trollop!


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Shakespeare's Champion (Lily Bard Mystery, Book 2) by Charlaine Harris

Shakespeare's Champion by Charlaine Harris


No steel magnolia, Lily Bard is one blunt, tough Southern woman--a tiny, karate-chopping, bodybuilding dynamo who's come to Shakespeare, Arkansas, to restart her life after a series of traumatic events just hinted at in this second novel in Charlaine Harris's series (after Shakespeare's Landlord). When she slips into her gym for an early morning workout and finds Del Packard with a barbell across his throat, she doesn't think for more than a second that it's an accident. Not when it's the third death in a couple of months in a town hardly big enough for its own WalMart. Then the blue broadsheets with thinly veiled hints of white supremacist activity start turning up under the windshield wipers of every car on Main Street. Lily's a relative newcomer to Shakespeare, but as a cleaning woman for the local landed gentry, she's privy to many secrets that most outsiders never learn. When a handsome stranger keeps turning up at the scene of an increasingly bizarre series of events, including a burglary at one of her regular clients and a bombing in a black church, she suspects he may be more than an innocent bystander. Which is too bad, because he stirs up desires that Lily hasn't felt for any man for a very long time. Lily Bard is a complex woman who embodies many of the contradictions of the modern South--its dark side as well as its charm--and this suspenseful, deftly written novel will send new fans scrambling to read its predecessor. --Jane Adams

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
The beginning of this book was very disjointed and hard to get into for me. Maybe if I had read it immediately after reading the first book it would have been better. It kept referring to things that had happened in the first book. But about 1/3 of the way through it started to come together and it got good! I really like Lily, but some of her logic makes no sense to me. I am glad that she seems to have finally decided on a man that she wants to be with and I am looking forward to reading more in this series.


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Shakespeare's Landlord: Lily Bard Series, #1 by Charlaine Harris

From the Publisher
When cleaning lady Lily Bard discovers the dead body of her nosy landlord, her plan of starting a quiet new life may end in her death.

My Opinion
Being a fan of Harris' Sookie Stackhouse series and having just finished reading the first book in her Harper Connelly series, Grave Sight, I was very pleasantly surprised with this book. Expecting fluff, I was very impressed with this book, which, while being a lot darker than her other books, had so much more depth and character than I was expecting.

I love the main character, Lily Bard, who after living through a very traumatic past, which scarred her both physically and emotionally, is trying to live a very quiet, simple life in Shakespeare, working as a cleaning lady and keeping to herself. When she witnesses the disposal of a body late one night while out walking, her nice quiet life becomes quite a bit more complicated.

I was very impressed with this book and the depth of the main character. The mystery that Lily faced was fun to try to solve along with her and the involvement of the other characters made this a wonderful read. I can not wait to get my hands on the rest of the series to see what happens next in the life of Lily Bard!