It’s going to be hard to review An Affair to Dismember without saying in the vein of Janet Evanovich, because that’s one thousand percent true, but it’s also so trite – it is literally on the book cover, and the Amazon review I saw of the series that made me click on the free Kindle link. Which is kind of annoying, because they’re definitely right: I mean there’s for sure a Stephanie Plum, Bobbie Faye, name your favorite screwed up, clueless, somehow still manages to solve the crime – in this case a murder nobody thought was a murder, a robbery from thirty years ago that nobody thinks actually happened, and the blackmailing of everybody involved with both – while bumbling through her ordinary everyday, train wreck of a life series, and this book is like all of those. Which, I, for one, appreciate.
Gladie is a mostly-psychic-matchmaker’s granddaughter, and her grandmother is ready to pass the reins of the family business on to her. Only Gladie is pretty sure she hasn’t inherited either of her grandmother’s gifts – she has a hard enough time seeing the present, let alone the future; and she’s never so much as set anybody up on a successful blind date – and so she’s pretty aimlessly attempting to try to find people to match up in their small town when Mysterious Circumstances start popping up all over the place. Also popping up? A suddenly-connected-to-the-mob best friend; a super handsome, but possibly murderous and sketchy hunk next door; the local “manwhore” of a police chief; a tea café that should really rethink it’s latte possibilities; and a crazy family of lots of maybe-killers, but definitely stalkers and real trouble across the street.
All in a regular day’s work, somehow.
And the thing about these type of books and types of series of books, other than their formulaic tropey predictablility – Are there at least Two Suddenly Interested From Out of Nowhere Hot Guys? Is there a Best Friend Who Somehow Knows How To Help You Solve Crimes Even Though You Are A Matchmaker and She’s an Accountant? Does it take place in A Small Town Where Nothing Bad Ever Happens, But Now All The Sudden Houses Multiple Serial Killers, Possibly?? – is that they somehow work in spite of all that. You somehow care about this crackpot mess of a person, and the two hot guys who keep fishing her out of (and pulling her into) trouble while being either clueless or competitive or both; the agoraphobic grandmother with the second sight that sometimes goes blind, the flustered deputy and his possibly fatally clumsy true love. It not only doesn’t matter that it’s all nonsensical and ridiculous, you kinda love it even more BECAUSE of it’s ridiculous nonsensical-ness. At least I do.
So my library list just got filled with THE MOST PUN-TASTIC titles ever, and I’m looking forward to when they all come in. Good first book for CBR 10!
(PS: This first book in the series is still free on Kindle, at least it was on 2-1-18: It’s how they suck you into to the whoooooole thing, but I don’t really mind.)
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