DNF: Third Loch From the Sun: A Scottish Sci-Fi Adventure

DNF #60: Third Loch From the Sun: A Scottish Sci-Fi Adventure by Rex Burke.

I'm on a very few author mailing lists, and Rex Burke is one of them. I signed up after loving the first book of a trilogy he wrote, and never left it even though the next two books worked less well for me. When he sent out an email offering an advance reader copy of this book, I jumped on it without thinking.

While the book is well written, it's just not the usual kind of thing I read. The author described it as:

If you know your 90s' sitcoms, the title will be familiar – and, I hope, gives a flavour of the story. Which is a 'cozy-ish sci-fantasy with some dashes of mystery and rom-com vibes sprinkled in.'

There weren't any sci-fantasy elements through the whole first third of the book. It was just a college kid goes to an island with a very low population looking for a summer job. The townspeople were pretty hostile to him for various reasons.

I don't read "normal people in the real, normal world" stories, which this was. Even once the fantasy elements were introduced, they were very much in the background (and not very interesting to me: One foot tall aliens living under a Scottish lake).

The issue is really on me. Nearly every element the author used to describe the book is something that generally doesn't work for me. Cozy books rarely work (though cozy games almost always do). Mystery? Zzz. Rom-com? A big no thanks.

DNF at 45%.