Book Review: Twenty Eight and a Half Wishes by Denise Grover Swank

Another book I downloaded just because it was a free Kindle book. This is becoming a habit. A Rosie Gardner Mystery, it said. When I started reading, it didn’t feel like a mystery at all.

Rose Gardner, lives in the little town of Henryetta, where nothing much ever happens and everybody knows everybody else. Rose isn’t having the best of days, her mother is annoyed with her, which isn’t a surprise. After all her momma is always annoyed with her. She storms out of her house, angry and a little surprised at herself for having stood up to her mother. Rose works at the DMV and her already sad day gets sadder when she sees a vision. Rose has a gift of visions, she sees all sorts of visions, and tends to end up annoying people by her visions, but this time, for the first time, it was a vision of herself. She sees herself dead on the sofa at home.

Rose doesn’t know what to make of it, but she decides to do something interesting with her life if it is going to end soon. She lists down twenty eight wishes that she wants to do before she dies. She realised that she has spent twenty four years of her life living her life the way her mother expected her to, she now wants to live life on her terms.

She reaches home armed with the wishes and her new found resolution, only to find her mother murdered, exactly in the way she had seen herself dead in her vision.

Not just that, she finds herself in the middle of a most murky mystery while being the suspect for her own mother’s murder. As she goes about getting herself exonerated and finding the real criminal, she finds that she has an unlikely ally, Joe McAllister, their new neighbour, of whom her mother had harboured suspicions of the worst kind, just because he wasn’t from Henryetta. He also seems very interested in helping her realize her wishes, while helping her out of sticky circumstances.

An interesting read. It had very fascinating, colourful characters and a mystery woven into everyday life which made it more than just a mystery. It felt like a very interesting read, the metamorphosis of Rose into what she becomes finally is most interesting. Rose’s relationship with her mother and her sister Violet form an interesting read as well. Rose herself is a quirky character, who seems to find trouble wherever she goes.

A book which turned out to be unexpectedly interesting. A nice one time read, a cozy book which I could curl up with. A 4/5 read for me.

About the Author

Denise Grover Swank is a New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author. She writes urban fantasies without vampires and werewolves, romantic comedy mysteries set in the south, and sexy new adult contemporary romances. Denise has six children, three dogs, and an overactive imagination. She can be found dancing in her kitchen with her children, reading or writing her next book.

This book is available for free on Kindle on Amazon(UK).