*My review title is a little bit of a fib – there is a Halloween decoration as the plot McGuffin here, but the story takes place November – February.
There are a handful of authors whose mailing lists I am on. One of those is Kate Canterbary and in some of her newsletters she provides links to free eBooks from other authors. In August it was Roxie Noir’s Break the Rules. I downloaded it, signed up for Noir’s list – even though I hadn’t read anything of hers yet – and then promptly forgot to read Break the Rules because it lives in my BookFunnel and it was a case of out of sight, out of mind.
Now I’m on Noir’s newsletter list, she sent out an exclusive novella from a different series, and I immediately dove into it because the plot description made me laugh and that’s usually a pretty good sign.
The description from Noir:
“Sure, since it’s currently spooky season, it’s fashionable to have your twelve-foot skeleton up in the front yard, but you know who’s got that skeleton out year-round?
Sprucevale resident Wells J. Renard III, that’s who! He’s a bold, quirky trendsetter who’s living his best life and pissing off the neighbors with his lawn decor. Naturally, the neighbors are writing angry letters about it, which go to none other than…
Municipal employee Josie Bowman! Former bad girl and current power user of mail merge, of course she’s curious about a giant skeleton that’s making everyone mad.
Will dressing up a giant skeleton for Valentine’s Day lead to dry-humping on a couch?”
Interest piqued!
Maybe because dealing with historic preservation folks, and overenthusiastic historical society types is part of my regular life, but the letter writing campaign against wells and his 12-foot skeleton made me laugh. We’re with Josie, and gets peeks into her life now, and what is was like when she was younger, as she encounters Wells and has to reconcile that with who he was in high school. There’s fun banter, dates that Josie isn’t really catching as dates, and a good bit of steam. My only real complaint with this one is that it jumps right from sexy times on the couch after Josie and Wells get on the same page that they have in fact been flirting with each other this whole time and are happiest in each other’s company, to a year later in the story as an epilogue. There just felt like a beat missing between the two things, and either expanding the epilogue to give the reader a glimpse of how they went from the couch to where we find them, or another chapter between would have helped the story flow. But I’m glad to have read it and will hopefully not forget again that I have more of Noir’s books that I want to get into.
Bingo Space: Wealth. Fines for inappropriate lawn decorations are part of the story and Wells pays a fine all in pennies and I cackled.
Bingo 4: Success, Justice, You, Wealth, Summer
