Raining Men and Corpses

This was a cute little mystery. Raina is trying to get the money back that she loaned her ex-boyfriend. He keeps putting her off until she pretends that she is pregnant. Now he sends her a text saying he has her money. However, when she arrives at their meeting, he is dead. To top off her bad day, her ex-husband is the lead investigator.

Raina is still not over her ex or her bad habit of interfering in his police investigations. Things get chaotic and it is a race to find the killer before she becomes a victim.

I enjoyed this little mystery. It is a typical cozy mystery and is perfect to cuddle up with on a cold day. The grandmother is a hoot and had me laughing several times. If you like the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich show more then you will like this book. show less

Raina Sun has returned to college in Golden Springs as a grad student, which allowed her to move a couple of hours away from her family in Chinatown in San Francisco. Looking for love she hooks up with her masters’ advisor and stupidly lends him money. She needs the money back or she will be eating ramen for a month. Because she is rotten at confrontations she lies that she is pregnant and must have the money bac,. He texts her to meet him in his office so they can talk, when she arrives his body has just been found in the bathroom. What is worse the detective on scene is her ex-husband.
A chick-lit cozy mystery with the sleuth a Chinese student looking for love. Fast-paced. Enjoyable

2.5 stars

I read this for the Terror in a Small Town square for Halloween Bingo.

Someone was in the house. Raina tiptoed around the car to the side door. The rushing noise in her ears competed with her uneven breaths. Her clammy hands gripped the doorknob. She twisted and pulled. The door scraped against the concrete floor, ripping through the silence. It opened an inch. Gooseflesh peppered her arms.

This is first in a series that looks to follow along with Raina as she amateur sleuths her way through situations and her detective ex-husband Matthew tries to get her to mind her own business. Their relationship was completely mystifying as the most we get about Matthew is he has gold flecked eyes, thinks he will snap one day because his dad show more was an alcoholic, and wants Raina to stay out of murder cases. Told from Raina's point of view we get statements here and there about how Matthew and her were childhood sweethearts, married, he left her cuffed and naked in a hotel room in Rome, and their marriage was annulled in Vegas. Again, this first in series, which all these little statements dropped here and there, I kept checking to make sure I didn't miss a beginning novella or something; I felt so lost in regards to their relationship.

The murder mystery had great red herrings but it was a bit overshadowed by how I kept being baffled how so many were disregarding/disrespecting the police and investigation. No one seems to be telling the police the truth and some officers seem to be ok messing up an investigation because of personal feelings. This along with not getting a pov from Matthew and him using believable procedure for the investigation, gave the story more of a chik-lit murder mystery farce.

Raina and the cast of characters including her grandmother and friend Eden, were enjoyable to follow along with for the afternoon but I needed more details to explained connections to really immerse myself in the story. show less

: cozy-mystery, contemporary, romance, seniors, amateur-sleuth, women-sleuths
Read on July 17, 2016

The grad student with problems. A murder of a colleague. Reappearance of ex husband who is lead detective on the case. A best friend/reporter who just steamrolls over everyone. Family trouble over an inheritance. A sassy Chinese grandmother who appears unannounced on her doorstep and moves right on in--to EVERYTHING.
That's the basics, but the mystery/suspense are well done, and there is fun and snarks throughout. I really enjoyed it!

Oh... Raining Men and Corpses. I really wanted to like this book, but I found myself starting and stopping it; rereading sections looking for the threads I had missed. Unfortunately, the lack of interest in the story doesn't come from the writing, but rather from a lack of an editing eye. At 207 pages, RM&C shouldn't be too daunting, but there is just too much extra information, and not enough whittling down to just the meat of the story.

Chinese American graduate student Rainy Sun lends her money too freely and needs to be repaid. Perhaps a job would help, but Rainy’s hoped-for emplyment turns out to be just more volunteer (over)work. Soon life’s spinning out of control, an ex-boyfriend isn’t ready to commit, an ex-lover is dead, and a very present grandmother has come to share Rainy’s small apartment. Devious plot twists range from match-making to murder, and plenty of mysteries lie in the background to Rainy’s curious relationships. It’s all good fun, grounded in Rainy’s excitable thoughts and dreams (including a “photo-burning ceremony with her friends Ben and Jerry”). And it’s very American, with loving details of student life, personal hygiene show more and spinach twisted on the fork. And cookies. Lots of characters, light-hearted and chatty, with a backstory waiting to be told in future volumes I’d guess.

Disclosure: I learned it was on a deal and I offer my honest review. show less

This had many of the usual problems of "cozy" mysteries, plus a few extra.

Raina is, in typical cozy convention, a doormat. And not just a doormat- she;s a graduate student whose faculty adviser comes on to her until they start to date, AND borrows money from her and refuses to repay it. Does it even occur to Raina to lodge a complaint? of course not. Not even after he dumps her via text message, after impoverishing her.

Another problem I had is that this book reads like the second volume in a series, not the first. By that I mean that there are so many hints of backstory- yet nothing explicitly explained, either in the family issues OR her sort-of romance- apparently at one point they were married, even, but all we get are hints. I found show more this so distracting that I was ignoring the actual plot because of the backstory issues that were raised but not satisfied.

The plot though- that was pretty random. After reading it, I am not entirely sure what the motivation of the murderer was, becuse the murder did not seem to forward their purposes, and there were several other people with far better motives.

The characters seemed to be pretty cardboard, too, with their reactions and actions serving to advance the plot- sort of- but not making much sense intrinsically.

In short- it read like a pretty decent first draft, but needed some serious work to make it work- and it didn't get that. show less