
Title: Virgo: Desperately Yours
Series: Zodiac
Author: Jahnna N. Malcolm (aka Jahnna Beecham n’ Malcolm Hillgartner)
Published: August 1995
Tagline: Someone at Fairview High will do anything for attention
Description: A killer deadline.
Even though Virginia Wells doesn’t believe in horoscopes, she does seem to fit the Virgo profile of being neat, precise, and too critical. At least that’s what her staff tells her. But as editor of the Fairview High newspaper, it’s her job to keep everything running smoothly; a job that’s been close to impossible lately.
First there was reporter Kim Keller’s mysterious disappearance, then the major sabotage of the newsroom, including a sliced-up photo splattered with blood. But most eerie of all are the letters coming to the paper’s advice column: bitter and threatening messages that convince Virginia the sender had something to do with what happened to Kim . . . and wants Virginia to join her.
Nostalgia Time!
Um, yeah. I got nothing. I’m pretty sure the Leo book was the only book I’ve read in this particular Zodiac series, but it’s certainly possible I’ll pick one of these up one day, and much like the Leo book in the Zodiac Chillers series, suddenly remember it fifty pages from the end.
This is not that book. This book is so forgettable, I was forgetting it as I was reading it. I got to the reveal of the killer, and was like, ” . . . who? Oh . . . right, them.” I fell asleep twice while I was reading it. (To be fair, I do tend to fall asleep reading a lot, especially when I’m getting off work at like 3:30 in the morning after almost ten hours at work, but . . . I’m still blaming the book. So there.)
Anyway, yeah. This book is boring AF. I kept waiting for something to happen for the first three quarters of the thing, and finally there was some action, but after roughly 150 pages of absolutely nothing, it felt absurdly tacked on.
You know, it’s really unfair that this sub-par Zodiac series got a full run of 12 books, while the far superior Zodiac Chillers got, what, 6 books? Not even a full zodiac. Boo.
[Note from the future: I started this recap in early September, planning on having it published before the end of the Virgo cycle – Sept. 22. As you can see, that didn’t happen. I recapped the first three pages of the book, then things started getting a little funky, both in a world sense and personally – drama with my mother and her new apartment (and her emotional manipulation and guilt trips); the cat died; we’re dealing with an ongoing flea . . . well, not infestation exactly, but like one step down from an infestation; dealing with terrible people online coming at me; and now I’ve managed to mess up my lower back/hip, probably just by sleeping wrong, IDK, I’ll be forty next year and things are starting to fuck up all over the place. Anyway, I’ve had almost no motivation for recapping, spending my days instead trying to distract myself from existential dread by rewatching Marvel movies. There are some very distracting arms and butts in the MCU. So, here I am finishing this recap after several weeks of sneering at my laptop and ignoring it in favor of Captain America and Thor. (And Loki. Loki 4-Evah.) Hopefully it doesn’t suck. The recap, I mean. The book definitely sucks.]
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