Written by Jude Deveraux, this novel follows Kate, the estranged niece of Sarah, a former writer who is living with her high school sweetheart’s grandson Jack. I know, the first sentence and I already have you set up for drama. Not only do we have that, but Jack recently bought the house of his boyhood crush (he was 11 and she was 16), only to then find two sets of bones buried under the giant tree in the back when said tree tips over. Now you have the murder mystery bit of this story.
Starting with the narrator; this was another one voice narrator, female, and of course it kind of ruined the male voices. It was also difficult to discern who was supposed to be talking because all of the men sounded the same and all of the women sounded the same. Other than that, the reader was decent. Easy to listen to and all that jazz.
Now, the story. This isn’t quite a cozy mystery, but it also isn’t on the normal mystery level. The best way to describe this is it read (heard) like a really good made-for-TV film from the 90s. A lot of those were good stories, but what happened and how the characters interacted weren’t that realistic for the situations they were in. Kate and Jack meet and are immediately flirting, yet Kate never really takes the bait, though they become close, and Jack never actually pushes it. He pushes a little. He pushes enough that you expected this to become a romance novel, which it didn’t.
With that, the one liners were AMAZING. Just, so southern and full of saying, it was wonderful. And having Sarah be a retired author who mostly did romances (based on what I have heard, it sounds like perhaps the author wrote herself into the book a bit), some of the leaps sort-of made sense. But, it really was written with “this thing has to happen and it has to happen now” without it making sense how we got there. So the writing is smooth by the story is a bit forced.
Overall, this was a really fun read. It satisfied the desire to have quick witted characters and read lots of back and forth sassy flirting without having to deal with everything that normally comes with a romance. A bit unrealistic? Oh yeah, for sure. A fun read? Yes.
If you like murder mysteries, if you like cozy mysteries, if you like romance without it turning into a romance novel, this is a good book to look to.
Now, below you will find horrid spoilers for the ending of this novel. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
Ah, so you choose to venture down here, did you?
Now, I knew that it wasn’t going to end how I thought it would (which means the road the author lead us down) when we reached what should have been the ending with at least 3 chapters still to go.
Just exactly where they went with the ending, given the beginning, was a bit of a surprise.
Another thing that I LOVED is that Jake and Kate weren’t actually together at the end. Oh, it was clearly insinuated that they would be, at some point, but they weren’t in this book. And I love that the author did that. They didn’t sleep together, fairly certain they didn’t kiss, and it was just a great thing for the author to do.
