Okay, so I'm "medicated" right now and hormonal as Hell. This should be fun.

Pros: well paced and in a unique town

Cons: I. Hate. Everyone. In. This. Book.

Every character was a cookie cutter walking stereotype. And the plot was so damn obvious I had it figured out about a quarter of the way thru. The only character I felt really bad for was the baby. My god. Insufferable petty white-people bullshit. And I'm white. I felt second-hand shame for these people. What was supposed to be political statements came off as just plain racist because of the blatant cliche of it all. 

But I had to finish this shit because I wanted to see how many things I had guessed right. The tally? All of them. Lord help me.

This book made me want to stab something. 

Nobody in it was likeable except Tiffany the former stripper and her husband Vid, who spoke like Gru. Everyone else acted like elementary schoolers. The passive aggressiveness, the snide comments, the two-faced behavior. Nothing spoke of adults. And the children were monsters, with the exception of Dakota who didn't have much of a personality at all.

The plot was so transparent I could see my hand through it. I had it figured out within about 50 pages. Nothing makes me angrier than a short story that was stuffed to make a novel. This was a prime example. Too much cliche plot filler, too much fluff, too much everything. And none of it was even good. This should have been a novella of max 40 pages. Not 400. Your eyes just glaze after a while. And with the audiobook, it JUST. KEPT. GOING. Every time I thought it was done, it pulled a Return of the King, and popped back up. God. 

Yes, this was a overhyped popular book with little substance, one-dimensional characters and a plot any middle grade could see.

Well, my dad means well when he sends me stuff. And usually he gets me. He sent me a Golden Girls collectors magazine once, and a cat shirt, and a book about a cat saving Christmas. But this book is just...wow. 

I don't read mysteries, for one. And I really don't do cozy mysteries because I find them campy and easy to figure out. But the 52 pages I read of this was like a bad Lifetime movie. Or maybe Hallmark. 

I mean, we start out with a conflict with the cat rescue and Baddy McBadguy.

Rich white Southern man in a 3-piece suit, Italian loafers, and a pit of money for all I know. Beak of a nose, beady eyes, weaselly fellow. Hates do-gooders and only worries about money. Wants to shut down the rescue. It was so straight out of a cookie-cutter Disney Channel movie I couldn't believe it. 

The McCall sisters are more of the same stereotypes. One is a jilted former New York exec. The other is the hometown bomb shell who stayed behind to run the family businesses. 

All we needed was a motorcycle riding Michael Shanks to show up and we would have a made-for-TV movie there, but I digress. 

Mmmm.

Wait, what? Oh, the book.

Anyway, the writing was stilted and stiff. The author didn't have a grasp of modern technology, and the dialogue was forced. The McCall sisters made immature decisions for grown business women, and that's what made me hang it up. When a book places characters in unrealistic positions and has the characters do unbelievable things just to move the story in a certain direction, it shows poor writing. People act a certain way and have certain natural reactions to things, and I am finding more and more that authors do not get that. And I am an author. Like this story: these ladies go to confront  Baddy at his business, they can't find him, it's way early in the morning and dark in the building. Normal people would effing leave. Not these brilliant ladies. They wander inside, using their cellphone as a flashlight, and proceed to just snoop. I closed the book when they had found the office, turned on the lights, saw nobody was there and decided to OPEN A LN ARMOIRE FOR NO REASON. They were there to see a person, not spy. There was no reason to spy, yet the author thought it was a great way to make the women end up caught in the murder web of the book. But do grown women really act this way? I certainly don't. 

Two stars, but subtract half a star for the cellphone flashlight stupidity.

Omg, I could barely finish the first chapter. Barf. Bec, the main character, is a rich girl kicked out of her prep school for numerous reasons. She's also a hacker with a grudge against authority. Her mother is your typical power-suit wearing business woman with no time for her daughter. Her daughter is clearly troubled and she can't even spare a single hour for her. 

As Cinemasins says, SKIP!

Okay, so I am not reviewing this blasted book. I will tell you exactly the problem with it shortly and concisely. All the bad things could have been avoided from the beginning if Amar had simply told his lovie love "Yo, we used to be married and madly in love. I'm the ruler of death basically, and you were my queen. But we had a fight and you left to be reincarnated as a human, so you lost your memories. I'm here to get you." 

An entire book could have been avoided with COMMUNICATION.

The only redeeming factor was the sarcastic flesh-eating horse demon at the end. 

I fucking hate books where they play the "let's all keep a shit ton of secrets and then be shocked bad things happen" game.

But the world itself was pretty. And the horse. Loved the horse.