This book is what happens when a nice girl takes on hardboiled crime fiction. Tough guy turned loner, James, heads back to his home town after his father's death just in time to get caught up in his younger, stupider brother's criminals mishaps. And there's a tough but vulnerable dame.

The settings were highly detailed in places and yet failed to convey an atmosphere. There were genuinely strong descriptions of places and people but the characters themselves were not as fleshed out as as their attire was. In the moments that I *was* given a chance to get to know them, they felt shallow as if pulled from the pages of a Lifetime Movie.

It's a paint-by-numbers noir set in white trash America. It wasn't terrible at all but the writing felt like a cheerleader who decided to get tough and dressed herself up in black and said "Now I'm goth." It's a all a bit Sandy at the end of Grease.

A Tree Born Crooked never rose above readable for me. What should have taken me a couple of days to read took me over a week because I just didn't really care. I'm not sure how I even found this book. Maybe it was suggested to me after reading something else although I can't imagine what that was. But I did manage to finish it and I'm not kicking myself about it. Hence the 3 star review. ( )