 | Dangerous Alterations |
Source: Review copy from the publisher.
Book Description from Back Cover (slightly modified):
When Tori accompanies the circle's feisty matriarch to the local health clinic, the last person she expects to run into is her ex-fiance's great-aunt. And the old woman is so shocked at seeing Tori that she promptly has a heart attack and dies. Now Tori's philandering ex, Jeff--the man she's vowed to steer clear of--has shown up in Sweet Briar for the funeral and has made it clear that he's ready for another shot with Tori...
Then Jeff turns up dead, apparently from a heart attack as well. Except the police chief believes it was murder--and that Tori's boyfriend may have been involved. Tori must rely on the emotional support of the ladies from her sewing circle as she pieces together the clues.
My Review:
Dangerous Alterations is a cozy mystery with a women's fiction focus. This book is the fifth in the series, but you can understand and enjoy it without needing to read the previous novels. This novel did not spoil the mysteries in the previous novels.
The novel focused heavily on several women who had been betrayed by cheating men and who were trying to find their selves and self-worth again. I though that this aspect was well done. The characters were engaging and complex and acted to the situations in realistic ways.
However, the vital clues for the murder mystery were fairly obvious, partly because they're mentioned repeatedly. Tori didn't look for clues so much as stumble across them frequently enough as to finally put them together. Any mystery reader familiar with the many ways of killing people will likely catch on quickly and be able to identify the whodunit within two guesses, even from the beginning. I rather wondered that the police hadn't thought to at least question in whodunit's direction since the motive was obvious, too.
However, the other situations that the characters dealt with--mainly the relationship tensions--carried my interest even though the murder mystery didn't add much suspense for me.
There were no sex scenes. There was a minor amount of explicit bad language and a very minor amount of fake bad language. Overall, I'd recommend this interesting novel.
If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.
Excerpt: Read an excerpt using Google Preview.
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