I usually do no pick up books in the spur of the moment from the library, because when I do, I end up picking ones that are quite bad. But we never learn from our mistakes, now do we?
I love mysteries and so I picked this book up hoping for some. The book started off with a good note- Protagonist- Carmela who runs a scrapbooking store called Memory Mine
Her friend- Ava runs a voodoo store (JuJu voodoo, I think)
Setting- New Orleans, a week before Halloween (apparently NOLA is big on Halloween, I had no idea- see I did learn something!)
With two murders in the story you would think it would keep you on your toes- but instead I found myself amidst incessant trivial portrayal of high-society's (both women are reasonably well to-do, especially Carmela who got a big fat alimony pay-out) celebrations culminating with the halloween parade. The descriptions of one party after another without any intelligent mystery-solving, the constant harping about Carmela's mystery-solving abilities and how she always has an eye for where trouble is was quite irritating (I mean come on- she definitely was no Miss. Marple). Not to mention the boring details of how Carmela and Ava go about getting ready for these parties!
May be it was a young adult read, but I love some of those young adult books. Anyway the good thing was there are interesting scrapbooking ideas and recipes (Carmela is supposed to be a great cook!) that I might try. May be I should give another of her mystery series a try- may be they won't be as bad!
Judgement
Read it as your own peril!
