Available as Kindle e-book for free!

One week ago, I more or less accidentally discovered this book as well as its free availability on Amazon, and I couldn't resist to download and start reading it immediately because of all the hundreds of raving reviews and four- and five-star-ratings here on Goodreads. The blurb sounded interesting and it's available for free, so what could have gone wrong?

Well, just about everything.

At least, I am relieved I didn't actually pay money for this, but sad that I did not own any physical copy of it, because every time I have had to read the protagonist say 'crappy doodles' I nearly smashed my mobile phone against the wall. (Fortunately, I was able to hold myself back.) "Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes" deals with a young woman called Rose Gardner who is controlled by her abusive mother, while her sister Violet has been able to escape the mother's overbearance and to start a family of her own. In the very beginning, Rose is bedeviled by visions of her own upcoming death, something which leaves her irritated because up to now, she always only experienced paranormal visions of smaller things like losing her keys and finding them with a vision's help.

So far, so good. Then her mother is killed early on and since Rose unfortunately managed to decide to become independent from her mother that very same day, she gets into the focus of the murder investigation. (Why should the police be interested in the fact that Rose has an alibi? Oh, yes, they would have appeared competent, something the author desperately tried to avoid throughout the course of the story.) Enter Joe McAllister, the mysterious guy from Rose's neighbourhood who seems to be the only one to believe in her innocence. You don't have to possess visionary abilities to guess where the path for Rose and Joe is leading towards. All in all, the premise was interesting, and to be honest, I was captured by the first fifty percent of the story and read them in one sitting.

Then everything turned to becoming boring, unrealistic and simply annoying. In general, I am not averse to romance in mystery stories, but this one felt forced and unnatural, and the metamorphosis from the ugly duckling to the proud swan is a motif I've been fatigued by long ago. The mystery was fairly uninteresting because of the main villain's lazy characterization (the only things I remember about him are his name and the fact that he was supposed to play the villain part), and the writing felt poorly executed and uninspired. In addition - if someone knows he is going to be killed within some days, wouldn't he or she at least try to prevent this from happening rather than coming to terms with his/her upcoming death and trying to enjoy his/her final days? Not even the possibility of fighting the visions Rose had was included, resulting in me being annoyed by the heroine after a very short amount of chapters and finally regretting to have wasted my time with this e-book. ( )

We had this local author in for a signing at the indy bookstore where I work and so I decided give one of her books a try. This book sucked me in from the first page. It's laugh out loud funny in parts but it has it's poignant moments too. Told in first person POV, it's narrator is a small town girl who everyone thinks is crazy so she doesn't have any friends and she has lived her whole life under her mother's thumb. When her mother is murdered she busts out of her shell. There is a romance here too and it's a pretty nice one. There were a couple of things with the police procedures that I was a bit skeptical about but I let them slide because that was really not the gist of the story.

The narrator's voice is superb. I loved her.

Talking to her dog on the way to rescue the hero:

I've shot right on past the Seven Deadly Sins and moved on to breakin' the Ten Commandments. We're surely goin' to hell now.

Can't wait to get in to work today to pick up book 2. ( )

I discovered Swank's Rose Gardner mystery series one afternoon while browsing on my Kindle, and fell in love with the main character, a quirky young southern gal who experiences often mundane visions (and awkward habit of blurting them out to the unsuspecting) and lives with a truly overbearing, belittling momma. In the first book of the series Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes, she has a vision of her own death and makes her bucket list of twenty-eight things she would like to do before that vision comes to fruition. When she finds her mother murdered on her living room sofa (instead of herself, as in the vision) – things get interesting.
Let me just say that I love Rose Gardner – her dedication, her kindness, her spunk – and her devotion to her flatulent dog, Muffy.

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.

Also have as an Audible book. ( )

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.

Also have as a Kindle eBook. ( )