The Lily Bard Mysteries
The Lily Bard series is one of the older series by Charlaine Harris. The first was published in 1996 and the last in 2001.
It consists of the following 5 books:
I've had my ups and downs reading the books as they are probably my least favourite of all of Harris' writings (and I've more or less read it all).
The books revolve around rape and torture victim Lily, who's moved to the small town Shakespeare to restart her life in relative anonymity. She works as a cleaning lady and she's into weightlifting and karate. If only life could be that simple. However, people seem to be dropping like flies around Shakespeare and Lily always happens to be close by and her curious nature and need for justice leads her to always getting involved in the investigations and more than often than not she ends up in the line of fire.
The books are quite simple, someone's been murdered, time to solve who done it. I like it; they're always easy comfortable enjoyable reads.
So what's my problem with them? Well, it's in the details. Quirks, something said, small details - minor things that add up. Lily herself I don't like terribly much as a person. The 90's political correctness/Southern "I'm not racist, but..." attitude. Basically just a lot of small things that are hard to point out, but nevertheless irk me.
Too my great surprise one of the characters from the series is revived of sorts in Harris' newest series Midnight, Texas. It's young Bobo Winthrop all grown up carrying a lot of luggage. Further to my delight the new series also features Manfred Bernardo, who originated in one of my favourite series by Harris, Harper Connelly. Tying the two series together and fitting them into a time line works really well and I wouldn't be too surprised to see people from the Sookie Stackhouse books showing up at some point too.
But back to Lily Bard. She's not my favourite. But despite my annoyances with the books, I've still read every single book in this series and overall enjoyed it. Harris remains my number 1 guilty-pleasure writer. Even when it's slightly bad, it's still good.
It consists of the following 5 books:
Shakespeare's Landlord
Shakespeare's Champion
Shakespeare's Christmas
Shakespeare's Trollop
Shakespeare's Counselor
I've had my ups and downs reading the books as they are probably my least favourite of all of Harris' writings (and I've more or less read it all).
The books revolve around rape and torture victim Lily, who's moved to the small town Shakespeare to restart her life in relative anonymity. She works as a cleaning lady and she's into weightlifting and karate. If only life could be that simple. However, people seem to be dropping like flies around Shakespeare and Lily always happens to be close by and her curious nature and need for justice leads her to always getting involved in the investigations and more than often than not she ends up in the line of fire.
The books are quite simple, someone's been murdered, time to solve who done it. I like it; they're always easy comfortable enjoyable reads.
So what's my problem with them? Well, it's in the details. Quirks, something said, small details - minor things that add up. Lily herself I don't like terribly much as a person. The 90's political correctness/Southern "I'm not racist, but..." attitude. Basically just a lot of small things that are hard to point out, but nevertheless irk me.
Too my great surprise one of the characters from the series is revived of sorts in Harris' newest series Midnight, Texas. It's young Bobo Winthrop all grown up carrying a lot of luggage. Further to my delight the new series also features Manfred Bernardo, who originated in one of my favourite series by Harris, Harper Connelly. Tying the two series together and fitting them into a time line works really well and I wouldn't be too surprised to see people from the Sookie Stackhouse books showing up at some point too.
But back to Lily Bard. She's not my favourite. But despite my annoyances with the books, I've still read every single book in this series and overall enjoyed it. Harris remains my number 1 guilty-pleasure writer. Even when it's slightly bad, it's still good.
I really liked the Lily Bard series, more than the Southern Vampire series. I also like her Aurora Teagarden books.
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