Max Starr is reluctantly psychic. Only adding to her problems from a troubled past which has left her promiscuous,unable to trust and isolated. Unable to release her dead husband, unable to move forward with her life, she finds the intrusion of dead women's spirits almost too much to cope with, particularly as she is advised by her dead husband to solve their murders. This is the first of 5 stories and I read them in a matter of days. The stories are well put together and would be interesting reading without the erotic componant. For once, the sex scenes are not gratuitous, but build up a picture of Max who is desperate for something, or someone, to make her feel normal, cared for and loved. My only gripe with this book is the continuous change of font size, from miniscule to massive - very distracting! However, I enjoyed this book and the series gets better. Glad I found them! Overall, I did enjoy this book. Max Starr tragically lost her husband in a robbery two years earlier, but his ghost is still with her - she can hear him, smell his cigarettes and peppermints, and, with her eyes closed, she can have sex with him.Then she starts to have dreams, or visions, of a woman's murder, and her husband encourages her to get involved in finding the killer. So far, so good - even though he was dead, the interaction between Max and Cameron was interesting, and at times the grief she felt at his loss came across very strongly.What I wasn't too impressed with was the fact that virtually every page had a reference to sex. Now, I don't consider myself a prude, and a lot of the books I read do have very sensual, erotic scenes in them. In this case, though, Max seemed to be thinking about nothing but sex - sex with her husband, sex with the detective, sex with her creepy boss, sex with strangers, sex with the dead woman's lover, sex with her dead husband who made her think about the detective, her dead husband talking about her having sex with the detective. What I found was that, instead of it having the impact it should have done - Max had turned to anonymous one night stands to cope with her grief, and Cameron was trying to make her see how destructive this was - it seemed as though every second thought was about sex - kind of like "I'll talk to my boss, I'll think about sex, I'll have a coffee, I'll think about sex, I'll drive to work, I'll think about sex" etc etc etc - and to be honest, I got bored with this attitude. It would have been more understandable if the point had been that she was overcompensating for the loss of her husband...but at one point, it mentions that she had been like this before meeting her husband, and had simply returned to the same behaviour. I didn't find this to be very erotic.All that said, I think - hope? - that there is a deeper back story - there were references to her childhood, which had not been happy, and what had happened to her after her husband was murdered.I am intrigued by the rest of the series, and am planning on reading at least the second - there are five in total - as I did like the premise of the story.
What do You think about Dead To The Max (2012)?
after reading 150 pages, I decided I didn't have it in me to finish this lackluster book.
—mb063
I tried the first chapter. I found it pretty stupid and very unappealing.
—raesh94
