HEATHER WELLS ROCKS!
Or, at least, she did. That was before she left the pop-idol life behind after she gained a dress size or two -- and lost a boyfriend, a recording contract, and her life savings (when Mom took the money and ran off to Argentina). Now that the glamour and glory days of endless mall appearances are in the past, Heather's perfectly happy with her new size 12 shape (the average for the American woman!) and her new job as an assistant dorm director at one of New York's top colleges. That is, until the dead body of a female student from Heather's residence hall is discovered at the bottom of an elevator shaft.
The cops and the college president are ready to chalk the death off as an accident, the result of reckless youthful mischief. But Heather knows teenage girls . . . and girls do not elevator surf. Yet no one wants to listen -- not the police, her colleagues, or the P.I. who owns the brownstone where she lives -- even when more students start turning up dead in equally ordinary and subtly sinister ways. So Heather makes the decision to take on yet another new career: as spunky girl detective!
But her new job comes with few benefits, no cheering crowds, and lots of liabilities, some of them potentially fatal. And nothing ticks off a killer more than a portly ex-pop star who's sticking her nose where it doesn't belong . . .
I'm not quite sure how to categorize this book, so it's going as a Cozy/Chick Lit Mystery in my spreadsheet. Seeing as I enjoy reading those, I enjoyed this one, too. Heather Wells may be a former teen singer, but that just makes her all the more entertaining and unique. She's not a whiny brat and doesn't really do anything TSTL in the book, thank goodness. The mystery is...on par with a cozy, not too gory or complicated, but just right. There's no real romance here, though there's a love interest and a former lover/pop star in the picture. I have to say I'm glad I picked it up from the library, but I think that I wouldn't have minded having spent money on it, had I done so. It's a light, fun mystery with fun amateur sleuth.
I also had to laugh every time she had to correct herself when calling her workplace a dorm instead of a residence hall. I definitely remember that from college. Some might find it annoying, but it did ring true for me. Oh, and anyone worrying about her complaining about her size...don't. She doesn't obsess about it.
The next one isn't going to be out until next January. Geez, I have to wait that long? And another one after that, according to the back of the book.
5 comments:
this is on my TBR pile, I thought it sounded good, I'm glad to here you liked it.
I've got it tbr too. I have to be in the right mood for mysteries though, so who know when I'll get to it :)
It's in my TBR pile, too.
Is the story narrated normally (more or less)? Or is it epistle/email/journal style, like "The Boy Next Door"?
First-person narrated normally. Like most mysteries.
Thanks for the info. I've only read some of Cabot's YA books and her three chick lit books. The YA stuff was first person narration in the regular fashion, but the chick lit was told via email and journal entries. I thought it was a great hook in the first book, but it wore thin through the other two books.
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