Gregory Ashe - Declination

Shaw and North are together. Finally. After eight years of knowing each other and loving each other and slipping past each other, they’ve finally told each other how they feel. Borealis Investigations is growing, and they have a major prospective client on the line. Everything is finally moving the way it should.
Until the night Shaw receives a phone call telling him that Detective Jadon Reck, his former boyfriend, has been attacked.
At the request of Jadon’s partner, Shaw and North begin an investigation into the attack. But nothing is at it seems. City police are working to cover up evidence faster than Shaw and North can find it, and the motive for the attack seems impossible to unravel.
When a conspiracy of dirty cops takes action against Shaw and North, the two detectives realize they are running out of time. They have to get answers about the attack on Jadon before they lose their own lives. But Shaw knows there are things worse than death. And one of them has come back for him, to finish what he started seven years before.
The West End Slasher has returned.

Comment: This is the third and final installment in the Borealis Investigations by Gregory Ashe, which concludes the trilogy. I'm glad I've read it, if only for closure.

After the events in the previous books, Shaw and North are finally together but they still need to deal with the consequences of the things that happened and the aftermath of how others reacted to their relationship now being romantic too. Things would go a lot easier too if Shaw could find a way to move on from his search for the Slasher, the killer who killed several gay guys and who has never been found. The man who was identified by the police never convinced him, but Shaw feels he needs to be sure, so when a new clue presents itself, they can't say no, especially since the clue is an attack on officer Jadon, who used to be Shaw's boyfriend. What is going on now, and what a mess the guys need to solve if they want to put an end to all the problems around them...

I will be brutally honest, finishing this book was an act of pure stubbornness, because I thought many times that I could simply not go on. The elements I didn't like much in the first book, which I hoped would be fixed in the second seemed only more obvious here, and I feel that the personal evolution of the characters and the improvement in their personal road was nil. To make it worse, this time the plot didn't convince me that much either.

I did like the fact the story had a goal, and that the Slasher case and investigation moved on and gave a conclusion to some loose threads, even if some were a little confusing at times. It's probably the only reason I gave this a positive note. The actual explanation is a bit weak, in my opinion, in the sense that the killer's motives were so ridiculous and due to weak manipulation but at least it made some sense in the big scheme of things.

The path to reach this point wasn't easy, however, and North and Shaw had a lot of situations to face before they were able to get on the right track. The reason is simple, they basically get countless distractions in between investigations and their personal drama, so my attention was so often lost that when they did something related to the actual Slasher plot, I probably missed a b«good part of it, in the midst of so many things that felt pointless to me.

Usually, this doesn't bother me much in other crime investigation novels, and at times it can even be fun/interesting to have stuff about the characters's romances and lives while we read about crimes, it can be a great overlap in terms of plot execution. Not here, though. For two books we've seen the cat and mouse game of North and Shaw walking on eggshells around one another for several reasons, although we could see they loved each other. Again, sometimes, this could be a wonderful detail and it would offer great sexual tension, but here it was actually more frustrating than heartbreaking.

These guys have a complicate story, no hiding from that, and I think it would have been necessary to have them star in more books before they could deal with all the things undone and unsaid before they can feel they are really in the right head space when it comes to love and stability in a relationship. It really didn't help me to picture this in a happy light when they endlessly banter about things that are supposed to make them seem endearing but that to me only read as tiring.

I suppose this is all a matter of personal taste, but I think this story in this style didn't work out. The crime investigation part, sure, it's doable and pleasant to go through, but the rest not really. I won't even get to the secondary characters, but let is be said that the majority were big disappointments. And, thinking about one in specific (Pari), even pointless.

Anyway, it's done and I'm sorry to say that I won't miss reading this story. Still, the guys got their HEA ad I thought that while this didn't happen in a way I can say was engaging, at least I had that as a fact and it would need to be enough. But, then the author had to include that last sentence and.... I'll simply stop here.

Grade: 5/10