Book Review: The Stars Shine Bright

I recently read The Stars Shine Bright by Sibella Giorello. It’s billed as “A Raleigh Harmon Novel” and that should have been my first clue that I was entering into the series down the line. In fact, looking on Amazon, there seem to be at least 3 prior novels featuring Raleigh. I don’t know that you absolutely *must* read the others before reading this one, but I do think it would help. There are too many situations alluded to in this book, all of which have a reasonably significant impact on the plot, that not knowing all the details leaves you a little lost. In fact, I wonder if, had I read the prior novels, I might not have found the first half (and seriously, it was just about exactly half) as slow as I did.

So why did I find the first half slow? Honestly, I had trouble getting invested in Raleigh. I suspect the author expected you to know her already (and really, why wouldn’t you be expected to? This is what comes of reading something out of order.) and so there was less character development at the start. And she started in a kind of bad place…and she was pretty whiny/annoying about being there. (Again, had I read the stuff leading up to that, I probably would have dealt with it completely differently than someone coming on to the scene fresh.)

That said, the story was good enough and the mystery formulated well enough that I want to go back and read the previous installments – even knowing how some of the things that were probably major cliff hangers and/or happy sigh moments in those books actually pan out down the road. I’m curious to see how Raleigh started out and what made her into the person she is in Stars.

In Stars, Raleigh is sent undercover at a horse track to investigate the possibility of race fixing. Very quickly after starting, though, she finds there’s more going on than a simple case of cheating. In addition to being slight over her head, her only FBI contact is Jack Stephanson, a man she pretty much despises. Throw in fiance trouble and a mother who isn’t speaking to her anymore and Raleigh is pretty close to hitting bottom, so she focuses on the case and prays the rest of her life will take care of itself. It’s worth noting for the mystery end of things that I did not figure this one out ahead of time – and that’s a huge plus for me. Typically I can peg the who and why pretty easily, not so with this novel. It was refreshing to be kept guessing until the end. (And not because the clues weren’t there – looking back, you see the author building the case very well. So it’s not one of those out of left field solutions.)

Overall, I’d give the Stars Shine Bright 3.5 stars — and really I would probably give it 4 or 4.5 if I’d read the first books in the series. It’s not a good stand alone (you can read it, but it suffers for lack of back story.)