Abandoned by Booklikes

This book was not that engaging. We follow Rose Gardner through several hundred pages and get to read how she reacts to everything around of her, instead of taking any ownership or showing any intelligence after she starts being investigated for the murder of her mother. There is a paranormal aspect to this book, but honestly it isn't treated consistently through the book, and it added nothing, so for anyone looking for a paranormal cozy read, I would skip this one.

It would be easy to become sympathetic to the character of Rose, but I ended up sick of her about a good 1/3 way through the book. You hear about her horrible childhood due to her mother and even with everything her mother has done to her and her sister Violet. However, Rose is passive aggressive with everyone after her mother dies. She starts feeling resentful of her sister Violet because she is trying to keep her safe and wants her to come and live with her and her family.

Rose in her infinite wisdom decides to stay at the house she shared with her mother even though it's a crime scene, the house keeps getting broken into, and she is also suspicious of her next door neighbor Joe who is hiding something. The character was all over the place with being very naive about everything, but also deciding that since she keeps having a vision that she is going to die, she is going to complete twenty-eight and a half (it's only twenty-eight) wishes which include things like drink wine, drink beer, kiss a man, do more with a man, etc. Yes of course she's a virgin.

I don't like it when authors paint a heroine as too stupid to live (TSTL) but man oh man Rose pretty much checked off every box. Hides things from everyone around her even after she has been attacked, doesn't tell her sister, who knows about her visions, about having a vision of dying, doesn't tell Joe anything though she decides she's in love/lust with him after a couple of days, doesn't tell her lawyer or the police anything. Oh and she does know who is going to kill her, so instead of her doing anything proactive about that, she stays focused on her wishes. And then when the cat is out of the bag with Joe (with a dumb story-line) she goes to the bad guy, pretend she has what he wants, and drinks with him, makes out with him, etc because Joe said this is a good plan.

Okay I have to move on here or I will be here all day.

The other characters in the book for the most part are really flat, except for Violet. I really wish that we had Rose spending more time with her sister since when that happened you got more backstory into both of their childhoods. You get why Violet just cut off their mother and didn't look back. Every other character was a mess though. Joe was almost as dumb as Rose. Almost. When you find out what he has been hiding....let's just say that Joe and Rose I guess are perfect for each other, because common sense seems to be lacking in both of them.

The writing was not great. I hated how Rose "spoke" through this whole thing. Sometimes seeming world weary, and then other times saying things like crappy doodle. I hope you enjoy reading about the devil, how she has a demon, and how she's going to hell all of the time, because that gets brought up a lot. I also didn't like how somethings were described in this book. There were a lot of weird metaphors being thrown around that took me out of the story.

The flow was painful. Nothing happens in this story for a good 85 percent of it. If you are expecting Rose to be investigating what happened to her mother, or trying to thwart the bad guy, keep waiting. I like cozy mysteries for the most part, but this one was too draggy by far. I think it's because the author decided to throw in a part of Rose's past that involved her parents and that took a while to get sorted out in the story. There are some romance scenes between Rose and Joe, but they were tepid in my opinion. When the big losing her virginity scene with Rose happens it is just referred to off scene so to speak. And of course, no pain, because you know, first times are always super awesome.

The setting of this small southern town really didn't work. I didn't get a sense of the place or other characters in this story. At times Rose acts like it's so small and nothing is there, but yet she can rent a corvette there.

The ending left me kind of appalled because there is a last sentence in this book from Joe spoken to Rose, and I hope she punches the guy in the face. I was actually kind of appalled by it just because of the whole thing they went through about not telling each other the truth. I felt like this was a bad Lifetime movie of a book.