The Finlay Donovan Series

I started the Finlay Donovan series before I had started in-depth reviews and as such this is going to be way more focused on the fourth entry, Finlay Donovan Rolls The Dice and only briefly cover the past entries. However, given that I’m currently unsure whether I will be finishing the series, this seems as good a moment as any to use this as a quick full series review.

Looking at my admittedly sparse notes on the first book, Finlay Donovan Is Killing It, it had left a strong impression albeit one that already showed issues with what it aspired to be compared to what it was. The Finlay Donovan series is generally advertised as a rom-com thriller hybrid, but in the first book it already becomes obvious that the story and the way it is told are neither thrilling nor funny enough to really qualify for either genre.

The pitch of an average, financially challenged American single mother being thrown into the role of a professional killer with ties to the mob is absurd and fittingly the situations Finlay finds herself in are also absurd, but they’re not always funny which is a problem a lot of authors attempting absurd humour run into. A nonsensical action or situation isn’t funny just because it is nonsensical, it needs to have a set up and a link to reality to make the absurdity funny which is something Elle Cosimano struggles with, random things will just happen and that’s somehow meant to be funny. Neverthelss, as a one-off, Finlay Donovan Is Killing It works; it’s silly, laid back and comforting. This cosy “everything is fine even when the worst is happening” atmosphere is something that sticks up until about halfway through book 4. In an odd way the Finlay Donovan books are very hard for me to put down and I’ve read through them faster than I’ve read through a lot of books I have enjoyed more, because just like fast food, they are (were) just so easy to enjoy.

However, already in the first book some issues cropped up, mainly that the author still wants to tell a serious crime story, Finlay and her acolyte Vero aren’t allowed to just sneak out of the mess they got themselves into, their escape from the mob must be grounded and this hurts the book significantly. One minute you’re reading an absurd and honestly poorly written action scene (because Elle Cosimano also doesn’t know how to write action) with Finlay quipping about her disappointing action woman skills, the next three characters get shot dead in front of her eyes by her own doing. However, because it can’t be too serious, Finlay like the sociopath she is remains entirely unaffected by anything she sees and does. It’s a jarring mix and because the books do not grow progressively more serious but the seriousness degree simply switches between each chapter it gets grating over time.

The second major issue is the characterisation, starting with Finlay herself. Finlay is an author who is struggling with coming up with a story, that is until she gets involved in a murder scheme which she directly writes into a book, meaning that the Finlay Donovan series exists in the world of Finlay Donovan and in that world Finlay’s books are adored by everyone, selling insanely well and even getting their own movie adaptation. This success is not immediate and as such in the first book I only saw it as a clunky author self insert living their fantasy as a successful author doing adventurous action heroine stuff. However, by book 4 Finlay’s success feels like obnoxious wishful thinking which isn’t helped by the vacuum of personality that Finlay is.

Finlay is a mum to two very useless children, that’s it. Finlay being a mother (and not a particularly great one at that) is her whole personality and that just isn’t good enough, aside from caring about her children’s wellbeing, Finlay is an empty husk with no opinions about anything else. Whilst this might sound harsh, her children unfortunately do not have any purpose either, they are around quite a bit but they have virtually no role in the story. I’m not saying protagonists cannot have children, but for the amount of pages dedicated to her children, I would have hoped for them to have storyline relevance. Unfortunately, all they do is scream, cry and generally show very poor behaviour which again is what children do but I don’t want to have to read pages of that if it’s not going to lead to story nor character development.

To compound these issues, we unfortunately have to go over Vero’s character. Vero is Finlay’s best friend, she’s a gambling addicted babysitter with an accountant background and owes a lot of money to a loan shark. Vero has got a personality, she’s got a fair bit of background…and she’s entirely despicable. As a villain, Vero is amazing, unfortunately she’s meant to be the funny sidekick to Finlay and is handled as the second main protagonist. Vero is repeatedly a thieving, greedy, self centred, childish moron. She simply does not have any redeeming features and the only reason she got involved with Finlay is a pure chance event in book 1. Finlay’s narration will tell us how smart she is but never show us her being smart, she isn’t even the one coming up with solutions for Finlay and Vero to get out of their mess, that honour of using her brain is reserved for Finlay’s character. Vero does get her own story development at least in the form of a romance that isn’t very interesting due to how dislikeable she is (because why would I want her to get a happily ever after), but is also finished up with a drunk Las Vegas style accidental wedding combined with matching tattoos she comes to regret but not really which was so cliché that I had briefly thought about dropping the book at that point. Finally, Vero is also half the reason Finlay is in the mess she is by the time book 3 comes around and she frequently encourages Finlay to commit further illegal acts when she isn’t just going off on her own. This is particularly irritating when it comes to Steven, Finlay’s ex-husband.

Steven cheated on Finlay before leaving her and their two children behind. He is also a self-centred moron. However, after the events of book 1 he is trying to atone for his actions. Finlay does not forgive him which is fair and understandable, however Vero goes out of her way to antagonise Steven going so far as to steal his credit card and maxing it out, something Finlay seemingly wilfully ignores or endorses. Cheating is bad, I’m not going to defend Steven’s actions, I am however very confused about Elle Cosimano’s personal experience with cheating since if Vero is anything to go by, she seems to believe it to be morally correct to financially ruin someone through criminal acts and to actively try to push someone to physical harm as a response to someone cheating once several years ago.

Keeping it going with unlikeable characters, Finlay’s mother is mostly a bland uninteresting character for the first 3 books until halfway through book 4 when she decides she’s had enough of her husband and turns into a religious drunk gambling addict who goes out of her way to break up couples before doing a 180 again as soon as her husband gives her one phone call. There is nothing to add here, this little piece of drama is simply there to pad out the story and has no set up nor pay off, it is just there.

Finally to wrap up the negativity, there’s the slew of writing issues whether they be stylistic, plot holes or just plain stupid out of author ignorance or lack of attention. This is all based on book 4 and I wasn’t feeling charitable whilst reading it so some of these are more nitpicky than others. Crucially, a lot of these feel like attempts at absurd humour whilst failing to understand how absurd humour works.

• At one point several characters have a big argument about how many secrets were kept and how much lying happened and that for the safety of everyone and also building up new healthier relationships everyone should stop lying. This big emotional open hearted argument is followed on the very next page with Finlay and Vero lying.
• In what I’m guessing is an attempt to be grounded, the story is peppered with pop culture references, brand names, actor names, world events are all thrown around and mentioned repeatedly and in the fourth book it gets as obnoxious as “it’s only Sainsbury’s but it’s Taste the Difference”.
• Around 75% of book 4 takes place in casinos and casino hotels, Finlay are dragging bodies around and committing other unsavoury acts but do not get caught because in 2024 Atlantic City, CCTV does not exist it seems.
• For some reason, Finlay and Vero get their fortunes read. Vero sensibly for once dismisses it as a scam, but Finlay for some reason takes it very seriously and the way it is written the reader is encouraged to take Finlay’s side on this. Not only is the fortune reading proven right repeatedly, it ends up being crucial to unstuck the story which could not have progressed any further would it not have been for Finlay’s leap in logic to trust something as stupid as a fortune reading with her very life whilst being shot at.
• This dialogue: “oh no the file is encrypted”, “can you open it?” “not without the password”. That’s what encrypted means, I get that Finlay isn’t computer savvy but encrypted is not an IT term, at this point Finlay just struggles with English for some non established reason.
• Finlay’s genius idea to wrap up the plot is a gambling metaphor and the author is real proud of that one as we get 3 pages of puns and metaphors about how gambling and Finlay’s current situation are similar really hammering it in so every reader really gets the idea. It lacks subtlety and in turn elegance for something that is actually kind of a neat plan.
• The book wraps up the full storyline and eliminates all antagonists yet it pulls a rabbit out of its arse to make a fifth unnecessary book happen.

So as a whole the Finlay Donovan series is really starting to lose me and if we were to focus on book 4, I’d be looking at 4/10 but it started off relatively strong and book 1 at least is fully deserving of a standard 7/10 enjoyable but forgettable reading experience. However, as it went on, the series clearly got too big for what it was setting up and I’m willing to suggest that Elle Cosimano simply each time looked at the success of the previous book to decide whether to wrap up the series or not. If book 5 is the last book of the series, I might still read it for completionism, however if the author somehow manages to stretch this one out to a sixth book, the Finlay Donovan series will unfortunately end for me on this sour note despite the high hopes it had initially generated.