Book 26, 2019

In Good Spirits by Michele Bardsley

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Between last night and this afternoon, I read an ebook novella, In Good Spirits. It's the first book in author Michele Bardsley's "Violetta Graves" mystery series, featuring down-on-her-luck Vegas cocktail waitress and reluctant medium, Violetta Graves.

After catching her boyfriend cheating on her, Violetta retaliates by throwing a one of her stilettos at him. The heel cuts Enrique in the face, and now he's suing her. The judge rules in Enrique's favor, and Violetta now owes the slime bag $5000.00. To begin paying it off, the judge also orders her to give Enrique the only thing she owns of any value--a beautiful pendant that is the only thing that prevents Vie from seeing ghosts.

Violetta is between a rock and a hard place. She's just lost her job as a waitress, and she only has 30 days to come up with the rest of the money she owes Enrique. Now, the banging hot guy she hooked up with for a one-off has shown up, and he's interested in seeing Vie again. Desperate, she turns to her sister--perfect Deirdre, with her perfect attorney husband, nice home, cute son, and perfect life. Only, Dee isn't feeling so perfect. She suspects her husband is cheating on her. Deirdre cooks up a scheme to steal Violetta's necklace back, but while they're visiting the club that Enrique frequents, he ends up dead, and Violetta ends up the number one suspect. Too bad the banging hot guy is a cop.

Paranormal lite, in a nutshell. The story was cute and fun, without anything dramatic bogging it down. Enrique was an absolute asshole, but other than that, everything was lighthearted. The story was shorter than I had anticipated, and while the author took time to set up the situation (both between Violetta and Enrique, and Violetta and Deirdre), the ending was rather abrupt. I felt a bit cheated, to be honest. It was like, "That's it?" Eh.

Favorite lines:
♣ "How could he buy new underpants? Let's murder him. You get the hacksaw. I'll get the plastic bags."
♣ "You tried to murder him with six-hundred-dollar stilettos? ...You should only use cheap shoes for weapons. If the blood doesn't come out, you've only lost twenty bucks."

Cute, but not remarkable. Average score.