Madison Johns

What a hoot! This story will pull you in from page one. Written in the first person, the reader will follow Kelly along at breakneck speed as Jimmy Bob becomes her personal guide into The Joyce. Quick repartee will elicit more than a few chuckles and outright laughs. The writing is clear, crisp, and well-written. Madison's unique voice and the humorous storyline will drives the story to the last page long before you'll be ready for the story to end.

I really wanted to like this book. I tried. I read it to the very end. But ...

I never warmed to the main character. She is so totally clueless. She turns her boyfriend into a cat and doesn't realize she is a witch? I mean, really. Her salve has an elderly woman who was arthritic moving as well as a girl in her teens and Petunia (yes, that's the heroine's name) doesn't get that she is a witch? I could maybe overlook this, but she is so insensitive that she doesn't realize that her actions show more will be hurtful to the victims' families. She thinks she can show up at a function in the small town and not be recognized. She's rude, callous, insensitive, and shouts too frequently for me to ever like her.

On top of that, the book urgently needs an editor. The words are all spelled correctly but one of my pet peeves shows up over and over: the use of "you" instead of "your." You is not a possessive. And when the author used "empathically" instead of "emphatically" as part of a description (not dialogue where I could pass it off as a character's ignorance), it made me reread the sentence until the light went on as to what was meant.

I'm not sure who would like this book, although obviously some people must have done for there to be more entries in the series. Maybe if you like cozy paranormal mysteries and can overlook the editing issues, then you could give it a whirl. For me, there are more books out there in the world to be read than to even try the second book in the series. show less

First, this is a spoof. So of course, much of the humor is over-the-top. That being said, be careful not to eat or drink while listening to this one, or you will need to keep a towel handy (or someone who knows how to do the Heimlich). Yes, some of the parts relating to the murders, and the dangers that Agnes gets into are quite disturbing, and unless you have had a 93 year old female relative who rode around in her truck with a shotgun mounted for easy release to provide "instant roadkill", show more you might find some of the situations wholly improbable. But I did have that relative, so all I had to do was imagine her and LMFAO! No plot recap, that was done by publisher, but expect lots of plot twists. Enjoy this mystery for the fun that it is, and don't expect Nero Wolfe or Kinsey Milhone.
Toni gives a great performance, and with seeming ease, she differentiates each of the characters (and they certainly are!) and adds to their personalities.
Purchased on the cheap courtesy of BookGorilla show less

It's a rather simplistic mystery--and I really felt like the reader had to suspend disbelief in reading it. I didn't find the characters very developed.

As in common in most amateur sleuth mysteries, the reader is expected to believe that the local police just could not solve the mystery without the help of the amateur sleuths. I felt that way with this book. Agnes or Eleanor would suggest something to Hayno as if he never would have thought to check it on his own--also there were a few show more times that the two ladies "forgot" to tell him some piece of their information until someone else mentioned it.

Add to that the unlikely event of winning the lottery, which is the only reason they can afford to go to Hawaii in the first place. For me, it just didn't all add up to a story I could reasonably believe.

I was glad to see the murder solved though I didn't guess who the murderers were or why. show less