Nappily in Bloom

I have not read the first three books in the series but I was still able to grasp the character driven and suspenseful plot and I fell in love with Venus, Jake and Mya.

I hate when reviewers give away to much of the storyline so I won't. I will say that I will definitely pick up the first three books because Trisha Thomas has made a fan out of me!

This book, the fourth book in the “Nappily” series, has just about everyone in some sort of sordid, secret relationship with someone else. Trevelle, a reformed (?) prostitute turned teleevangalist is uneasily married to Airic, a womanizer. Airic and Venus have a child, Mya, but an antagonistic relationship. Venus, married to Jake, a onetime entertainer hiding out in suburbia from past criminal involvement, runs a flower business (hence the title of the book) and accepts the monetary favors of a Senator, the father of Mya’s best friend. Trevelle, while a prostitute had a baby, Keisha, who was taken from her and raised by Delma. Keisha is planning her wedding to Gray, a womanizing, scheming, entertainment agent who has had an affair show more with Trevelle, the mother of his fiancé. All of these mixed up relationships get rather tiresome as it is hard to find anyone with any redeeming social values. The awkward writing which employs the first person for several characters without identifying them is confusing and the plot is pretty standard TV movie fare. show less

Very good book. Characters are described so you can see them. Very well written. I am looking forward to reading her other books. True to life: good and bad happening.

I won this in a book give-away. Being an uncorrected advance copy is extremely annoying, as there are errors everywhere. Add to that, I don't like jumping into the middle of a series of books; all through reading this, I've felt like I'm missing something not having read the previous books about these characters. I almost gave up before I was half-way through, but as much as I don't like picking up a series in the middle, I hate abandoning a book more. I should have just skipped ahead and read the last four pages to find out what happened and saved some time.

I really didn't like this book.

I couldn't identify with any of the characters, had no sympathy for any of them (except a minor one - Keisha), and had no idea why they made the choices they did. So many of those choices were bad ones, meaning that bad things happened as a result. One of the characters even wonders why it seems that every time happiness is within his grasp, it disappears, but it doesn't occur to him that his awful choices have any bearing on his life. Everyone's setting themselves up for disaster at every turn. The "solution" to many problems seemed to be sex. Even the "nice" or "good" characters were manipulative of the people they professed to love.

Plot elements are introduced and then left hanging. For example, a show more couple has a lawyer on retainer in case anyone accuses them of tampering with a DNA test, but it doesn't occur to them to actually CALL their lawyer when they want to modify their custody agreement. One thing leads to another, and one of the main characters then decides she can't do anything when her daughter is kidnapped by her biological father. It seemed that "there's nothing I can do" was a common explanation when the plot required it.

The writing style bothered me. I couldn't figure out what was going on for the first third of the book - it seemed as though the main character had split personalities and was living a double-life. Then I realised that the book was written in the first-person, but from TWO perspectives! There was no way to figure out whose head you were in until a name was spoken, or some plot point was mentioned. The book starts going into third-person narrative at about the 1/3 mark, and then it switches between first-person (still in two character's heads) and third person, used inconsistently, and even switching between perspectives during one scene. There were many plot inconsistencies. There were really short, bullet-point style sentences in some parts. I really hope these things will be corrected in the final version.

The book was left wide open for another in the series, but I was so unimpressed with this one that there's no chance I'll be reading any more. show less

The story was only ok. The copy I read was an ARC so some things might have changed for the real release.

The book takes several different first person points of view, which were not clearly articulated at the start of chapters, thought that might change in the non-arc version ( i would hope!). In one place the point of view changed in the middle of a chapter. Even if these switches were clearly marked I don't think this would be an effective technique for this story.

The possible suspenseful part, where the main character was kidnapped, was not drawn out long enough to build any real suspense.

I think someone who had read the other books in the series might have a better time with this book, since they will know the characters and be show more able to follow how everyone is related to everyone else more easily. There might have even been too many characters. The book likely could have dropped the wedding story all together and focused on the turmoil between Venus and her ex-husband and his wife. show less

I found this book easy enough to read. I do wish I had read the other books in the series before reading this one though. Still it was easy to follow and the characters came alive.