entertaining – Life of Cri.me

Life’s tricky for Melody Bittersweet.

She’s single, she’s addicted to sugar and super heroes, her family are officially bonkers and … she sees dead people. Is it any wonder no-one’s swiping right on Tinder?
Waking up lonely on her twenty seventh birthday, Melody finally snaps. She can’t carry on basing all of her life decisions on the advice of her magic 8 ball; things have got to change.

Fast forward two months, and she’s now the proud proprietor of her very own ghostbusting agency – kind of like in the movies but without the dodgy white jumpsuits. She’s also flirting with her ex Leo Dark, fraternising with her sexy enemy in alleyways, and she’s somehow ended up with a pug called Lestat.

Life just went from dull to dynamite and it’s showing no sign of slowing up anytime soon. Melody’s been hired to clear Scarborough House of its incumbent ghosts, there’s the small matter of a murder to solve, and then there’s the two very handsome, totally inappropriate men hoping to distract her from the job…

Welcome to Chapelwick, home of the brand new and hilarious Girls Ghostbusting Agency series, where things really do go bump in the night.

Take some Janet Evanovich, mix it up with some classic Scooby-Doo mysteries, throw in some Ghostbusters, some of M Knight Shyalaman’s Sixth Sense along with a pair of devilishly handsome but totally inappropriate suitors, and you’ve got your next funtastic read. If anything can take a grey, miserable time and turn in on its head into one filled with smiles and laughter, this book can do it

Melody Bittersweet is a hilarious narrator, and absolutely adorable, you can’t help but fall for her charms as she converses with ghosts, translates their thoughts and words to the “I-don’t-see-dead-people” folks, and solves mysteries, all while caught between an outrageous ex-boyfriend and an all too desirable complete non-believer out to discredit her at all times.

Her sidekick’s are just as much fun, and I’m really struggling to decide who I like the most. Feisty Italian descended Marina, loyal and innocent Artie, Melody’s interfering family or LeStat the pug, there’s so much to look forward to from this interesting bunch that I’m already keen to find out what’s next.

With an interesting and tragic family mystery to solve, there’s plenty in here to keep the cosy crime fanatic in you enthralled, just enough romance to spice it up, and some great wisecracks, and while you let yourself go in the company of Melody Bittersweet, I will be eagerly awaiting the next instalment…..

How far would you go to avenge the one you love?

Blum has a secret buried deep in her past. She thought she’d left the past behind. But then Mark, the man she loves, dies. His death looks like a hit-and-run. It isn’t a hit-and-run. Mark has been killed by the men he was investigating. And then, suddenly, Blum rediscovers what she’s capable of…

” A highly entertaining read…”

Some people really know how to do their job when it comes to attracting your attention to a book, and so when I saw some of the ‘blurb’ for Woman of the Dead I just had to pick it up….

“Kill Bill meets Dexter via The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo”

It turned out to be an apt description for what I found to be a highly entertaining read.

Blum is an intriguing character, beginning as a warm, kind-hearted and loving wife and mother, despite the harshness of her childhood, and her actions of the past. She is an accomplished business woman running her own funeral home, happy and settled with her policeman husband Mark and their two daughters.

When Mark is killed in front of her eyes she is devastated. It is only when she discovers the ‘off the books’ investigation he was undertaking, amongst the papers in his study that she begins to believe that the accident was in fact murder. Then after beginning to investigate the crime Mark was looking into, she uses her skills, knowledge and the tools of her trade as an undertaker to exact brutal, bloody and violent revenge on those who were responsible.

I loved the pace of the story, and the way that not all things go to plan for Blum, forcing her to not only re-evaluate her actions and decisions, but also the repercussions to herself and her family. There are some vile and horrible characters to discover with some extreme language to accompany them, and many of whom you would rather see brought to justice, and yet at the same time you are always backing Blum.

If you want a break away from the usual gritty crime reads, or just fancy trying something different, Woman Of The Dead is ideal for that. It’s also the first in a trilogy, and I’m sure, like me, many of you will be keen to see what happens to Blum next.