The Centaur’s Last Breath by April Fernsby

A centaur is killed by an assassin. Who hired the assassin? And why?
The centaur, Selo Cezerus, was a willful and thoughtless creature who caused havoc wherever he went. He made enemies in the centaur community and amongst the residents of Brimstone.
Cassia Winter, a justice witch, investigates Selo's murder with help from her cat, Stanley. They are confronted with a long list of suspects.
Was Selo killed by a jealous family member?
Or had one of his rivals put an end to his life?
Another murdered body turns up which forces Cassia and Stanley to go in a new direction.
With one unexpected twist after another, Cassia despairs of ever finding the killer.
A puzzling mystery with a twist at the end.

I’ll be honest, this book wasn’t a favorite of mine. It just didn’t capture and keep my attention like I would have liked it to. I found it all too easy to put this one down and not pick it back up. I had to remind myself that I needed to read it for the review just to get through it.

For one thing, I took the book under the guise that it was a brand new, yet-to-be-released book. It’s not. It was released over a year ago and there are actually twelve books in the series so far. Another issue is that this book is actually book number three in the series so I came into it without any knowledge of what had transpired in the first two books. There’s just enough background that you won’t necessarily need to read the first two, but I really dislike reading books out of order.

Honestly, the characters were rather… meh. I could take or leave any of them – although I can really leave Astrid. But the unrequited love between Luca and Cassia is less stiff and forced, making it painful to read scenes between the two. Astrid’s burning hatred for Cassia is clear throughout the book and it seems to be a far more prevalent point than it should have been. The only character I truly enjoyed was Stanley and that’s probably because he’s a talking cat.

I gave this one 3 stars because it’s not horrible, but it’s not great either. It’s just kind of meh. Maybe it just wasn’t the book for me.