Book 49, 2020

[chez_jae]

About Thyme by Karny McFlynn

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Last night, I completed the ebook novella About Thyme by Karny McFlynn. It's the first installment (prequel, I guess) of the "Thyme Witch" mystery series, featuring Everly Thyme.

Everly is in a rut, bored with her job, her boyfriend, and her life. She gets more excitement than she bargained for, however, when she is invited (summoned, really) to dinner with her enigmatic great-aunt Legoria Thyme. Legoria sends a car to pick Everly up, but before she even makes it to her aunt's house, the car is attacked by creatures out of legend. Everly barely escapes with her life, and now she must keep her wits about her to find out whatever became of her father.

This was utterly confusing. Narrative was choppy, I got no real sense for the characters, and memory spells were cast, which left Everly not recalling things. I believe I was affected as well, because I forgot certain parts, too, until I went back and gave it a quick skim read. For one thing, in the second paragraph of the book, there seems to have been a murder, yet no mention was made of it again. Did it happen, and Everly forgot about it, or will it happen in future installments? I have no idea. Another thing that confounded me was that Everly's boring boyfriend was named Jim, and her mother's on-again, off-again boyfriend's name was...Jimmy. Seriously?! I swear, that's the reason I went back and skimmed the story again, because I wasn't sure whose boyfriend Jim(my) was. Turns out, both of them. Oh, not as in it's the same guy, but men with the same name. Ick. At least the editing was fair, and there were a few lines that made me laugh.

Favorite lines:
♦ Finding out that monsters are real...well, that shakes things up. Finding out you're one, too? Priceless. I should have listened to my mother.
♦ To her "I'm O.K.," meant I was being held hostage by alien beings and probing was the first item on their to-do list.
♦ Worse than the Christmas Mom stayed up too late wrapping presents and everything I got the next morning was from Satan.
That last line left me howling with laughter!

I wanted to like this, but nothing made sense. It's getting two stars, and one is for that killer line about Satan.