Schachmatt für den Entenkönig: der Krimi für die Wanne

Do you want to get in the bathtub with me?

[Quote translated from German.]

I recently saw this ad in a German literature magazine about these books specifically made to read in the bathtub. They're short stories that are supposed to take you around 15 minutes to read and they're printed on these puffy, floating little plastic booklets. They honestly remind me a lot of those sensory books for toddlers and I believe children's toys is actually where they took the idea from. Except this time they are explicitly for adults with crime and romance stories.
It definitely sounds like a gimmick product more than anything. As someone who takes his physical books as well as his ebook device in the bathtub all the time, it seems a bit extra funny. I haven't dropped a book in the water yet but even so, at least my ebook device is actually waterproof. lol
(Hell, I'm even writing this review from the bathtub via my phone right now.)

Well, anyway... curiosity got over me and I bought one of these little bathtub books for like six bucks and a few days later, I read it as intended: In the tub with a bubble bath.
I picked a crime story which didn't sound too bad. The story revolves around fraud at a rubber ducky race in a park.
Honestly not a terrible premise for a fun short story, especially to read while taking a bath, but the writing is pretty dang flat. None of the characters are very interesting and the story progresssion doesn't really offer any engaging intrigue or surprises. The villain's motivation is eventually revealed in a very anticlimactic way. This definitely could have been written in a more entertaining way. 

I also noticed that there are frequent namedrops of specific sights and places of this real German town the story is placed in, without any purpose for the plot. It was no surprise when I looked up the author afterwards and noticed that they wrote a bunch of regional crime novels before. 
I'm sure those things are neat if that's what you're looking for and you actually know the place. But here it just felt like meaningless filler lines, mentioning random buildings or streets for no purpose.

Well, it's a pretty mediocre read. Not terrible but also not anything that needs to be read. It doesn't have anything to really remember it by. It's just one of those airy, fleeting stories like the bubbles in bathwater.

Oh, also: The cover says it should take the reader 15 minutes to read. I finished it in 10. 😎