Since I am really behind in updating the books I have read, this one will have two of them in it. The first one is Murder At Spirit Falls. Here’s a little about the book.
A No Ordinary Women Mystery. Robin Bentley’s cabin, perched above Spirit Falls in the lush Wisconsin woodland, is remote enough for her and her book club friends to shed the restraints of city living, hike in the woods, take moonlight walks and go skinny dipping under the waterfall. But when they discover a battered body below the falls, the No Ordinary Women find themselves up to their bifocals in a real mystery, and one of them could be the next victim.
We picked this for our “Local Author/Debut Novel” genre. It happened to be both. It sounds like this was the first in what is intended to be many books featuring these characters. It was ok. There wasn’t much character development and they weren’t very exciting to read about. There were some funny parts, but mostly I found myself skimming at the end. There were a lot of references to local areas. It felt like too many and they were overdoing that part a bit. The name of the newspaper and local mall isn’t something readers care about. But a friend pointed out that this probably happens in other books for other areas, we just don’t notice it as much because we aren’t from there.
Overall, the book was just OK. I won’t be shouting its praises from the hills or anything. But it wasn’t horrible. It had potential there were just some loose ends I didn’t care for at the end. There are lots of good books out there and unless you really want to read something by local authors, you can probably skip this one.
Speaking of books to skip….
This was another book club book….Stop Dressing Your Six Year Old Like A Skank. It was for our “Comedy” genre. I didn’t think it was funny at all. I’ll admit I didn’t even finish it, but that was because it was awful and I had no desire to even try to tough it out. Some of my friends loved it, but I didn’t like the way it was written at all. It was a bunch of small “stories”. Like the author was sitting across from you ranting and whining about every random thing she could think about.
Celia Rivenbark is an intrepid explorer and acid commentator on the land south of the Mason-Dixon Line. In this collection of screamingly funny essays, you’ll discover:
*How to get your kid into a character breakfast at Disney World (or run the risk of eating chicken out of a bucket with Sneezy)
*Secrets of Celebrity Moms (don’t hate them because they’re beautiful when there are so many other reasons)
*ebay addiction and why “It ain’t worth having if it ain’t on ebay”
*Why today’s children’s clothes make six-year-olds look like Vegas showgirls with an abundance of anger issues
*And so much more!
Celia Rivenbark’s essays about life in today’s South are like caramel popcorn—sweet, salty, and utterly irresistible.
So that’s that. If you think you might like it, go for it. But I already checked to see if I could return it because it just wasn’t for me. Oh well. I like that I don’t love every book we pick. I think that’s the fun of book club. If it were up to me, I’d probably continually read the same type of book all the time. I love that I am forced to branch out and read something out of my comfort zone.
Happy reading!
