MY SECOND DEATH by Lydia Cooper ****

I found this to be very good reading but the main character is so "off" it's unbelievable. A girl, Michaela, feels no physical pain, has no empathy, which makes her a sociopath and bunch of other weird psychosis names, has an older brother who tortured her all her life to get a rise out of her but of course he never did. The brother was basically a killer who blamed most of his dirty deeds on the sister who is so dumb or stupid she never explained to anyone that she didn't do anything. Just spent a lot of her childhood in mental institutions drooling on herself but now somehow she has redeemed herself to teach other children, I guess college students.

She's rude to everyone in her path, says she can't emote but is honest as that's the only way she can be. This has to be some fabricated psychotic person. She's even ruder to her own mother and father, more so than necessary and they seem to play almost no role in her life whatsoever. They're blank slates you never get to know at all really. You're pretty much stuck with Mickey, Aiden (her new roommate) her brother David and that's about all folks.

A few fires, some dead bodies turn up that she's supposed to solve the crimes without involving the cops or herself -course she CARES enough not to be sent back to the mental institution to go to all the trouble of trying to solve the cases herself.

One very irritating aspect of the writing is how everything smells. Drove me nuts. She doesn't want to be next to someone because "she'll be able to smell his teenage body odor and deodorant and the cafeteria and perfume scents lingering on his school clothes." HUH? What perfume? Or "The frozen crust of earth purls (?) with trapped melted snow. The scent of snow, wet crumbling tree bark (who smells this?), of exhaust. And under it all the sharp bitter smell of scorched wood, melted rubber, overheated metal, the last traces of an apocalyptic fire." Come on...really? She must be a dog but no one told me, a bloodhound perhaps. Odors like this crap are common thru out the book. It's ridiculous.

Otherwise I could have enjoyed it, if you bypass the fake ability to smell like a dog (and sense odors as one, lol) you may like it as well.