Book Review: Twenty Eight and a Half Wishes

• Review: Twenty Eight and a Half Wishes
• Series: A Rose Gardner Mystery #1
• Author: Denise Grover Swank
• No of Pages: 376
• Release Date: Published March 19th 2012
• Publisher: Createspace

Amazon, Barnes & Noble

Goodreads Synopsis:

“It all started when I saw myself dead.”

For Rose Gardner, working at the DMV on a Friday afternoon is bad even before she sees a vision of herself dead. She’s had plenty of visions, usually boring ones like someone’s toilet’s overflowed, but she’s never seen one of herself before. When her overbearing momma winds up murdered on her sofa instead, two things are certain: There isn’t enough hydrogen peroxide in the state of Arkansas to get that stain out, and Rose is the prime suspect.

Rose realizes she’s wasted twenty-four years of living and makes a list on the back of a Wal-Mart receipt: twenty-eight things she wants to accomplish before her vision comes true. She’s well on her way with the help of her next door neighbor Joe, who has no trouble teaching Rose the rules of drinking, but won’t help with number fifteen– do more with a man. Joe’s new to town, but it doesn’t take a vision for Rose to realize he’s got plenty secrets of his own.

Somebody thinks Rose has something they want and they’ll do anything to get it. Her house is broken into, someone else she knows is murdered, and suddenly, dying a virgin in the Fenton County jail isn’t her biggest worry after all.

My thoughts:

Really good book! Ok, I’ll admit I’m doing a book review for the second book, Twenty Nine and a Half Reasons so I  needed to read the first. Mysteries are not my normal type of read but I was going to put my differences with mysteries aside and give this a try.  Well, I don’t know about the rest of the mysteries in the world but I can not, CAN NOT wait to read the sequel.

I started reading and I had not read the Goodreads synopsis on Twenty Eight and a Half Wishes yet. The first sentence and Rose Gardner is talking about seeing herself being dead. Ok, intriguing. Denise Grove Swank you have got my attention. Forget page 99 I’m fulling committed at line one! But I still had in the back of my head, mystery, don’t get your hopes up. I didn’t have time to think anything else. The characters took control and had me at their mercy the entire day. Yes, I read this in one day. Honestly I didn’t want to put it down.

Now there are some negatives, but not many. The plot was really good there are a couple of things like Rose not knowing anything at all about the real world that kind of got to me. But she is psychic, I can only imagine what that would feel like. So, although I’m giving this book a 4.5 there was just the tiniest stuff that got to me. But really, it was a fun read, the characters drove the story in an amazing way. The mystery was not predictable, for the most part. And on top of that Rose even being in dire situations was able to make light of things. I literally laughed out loud multiple times because she would say something while her life was on the line! But really, wouldn’t we all do that? Try to diffuse a situation when we have no other hope of getting out? Of course we would! And that is exactly why it worked so well in this book.

I am definitely moving on to Twenty Nine and a Half Reasons. Another mystery! Thank you Denise Grover Swank for pulling me out of my comfort zone.

Coming soon! Review of Twenty Nine and a Half Reasons will be posted August 6th!

You may also enjoy:

Book Review: High ABove by Mari Freeman

Book Review: Red Dawn by JJ Bonds

Book Review of Twenty-Nine and a half Reasons by Denise Grove Swank

 

Tags: Book review, denise grover swank, twenty eight and a half wishes