Absolutely love this series!! I cannot wait to read the next installment!! A really cute, funny series! ( )

A great follow-up to the first book in the series! ( )

Wonderful story. A story about Africa without violence and folktale stereotypes. Hopeful in a setting of real problems. ( )

2007

If approached at a surface level, this book is excellent light reading - bits of humour, warmly drawn characters, and an unusual language style which I think probably echoes the Botswana way of thinking (not that I'd know really). By that I mean that the language is unusually simple and direct, with a tendency to state straight out, in the most matter-of-fact way, things that Western cultures tend to euphemise and dance around on tiptoe.

I think the relationship between Mma Ramotswe and Mr J.L.B Matekoni is very nicely done, and undergoes some development in this book, after its beginning in The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency. Mr Matekoni is perhaps the most endearing character I came across in the book, mainly because of his humble opinion of himself and his high opinion of everyone else, Mma Ramotswe in particular.

On a deeper level, I don't quite know what to think, and can only assume it's not meant to be approached deeply. But there's a tendency to cliche, and a sense of the author choosing all the things that are supposed to appeal to women and throwing them all into the book to keep us happy. Orphans in wheelchairs, a mother seeking for a 10-years-lost son, womanising men being punished, and faithful men being rewarded. All very moral, which I usually like in a book, but it all seems a bit too purposefully designed to tug at the heart strings. Which it didn't really do for me.

All the same, it was a good read, great for a palate cleanser in between heaver-weighted books. I have every intention of reading the whole series over a very long period of time, just one here and there, when the opportunity arises and the mood takes me. I have long loved the title of the next in the series, Morality for Beautiful Girls, and like the idea of reading it some day.