Book Review: A MOST PECULIAR PROVIDENCE

Title: A Most Peculiar Providence

Author: Angela Hunt

Publisher: Hunt Haven Press

Pages: 428

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

Twenty-six-year-old Joshua Donnelly lives in a small town called Peculiar, with his mother. He handcrafts wooden toys for a living. When she passes away unexpectedly due to a stroke, his world is upended. He decides to fulfill her last wish that he “fill the house with love” by getting a dog, Hoss.

Meanwhile, Heather Thomas and her boyfriend, Brett Steelhawk, of three years, are homeless and busking together near Peculiar. Heather is pregnant but Brett doesn’t want the baby. On their last day in town, she miscarries and then finds that Brett has abandoned her.

When Sarah, a vagrant, gives birth to a baby girl, she gets Heather to promise to hand over her baby to someone kind in Peculiar who will look after the baby. With no choice, Heather leaves the baby outside Josh’s front door. What happens next? Will Josh look after the baby? And is there any hope for Heather?

When Hoss digs up a human bone in Josh’s backyard, the past threatens to overshadow Josh’s happiness in the present. Who is responsible for the crime? And will Josh pay for it?

 

The story is told from the first-person past-tense PoV of the town police chief as well as in the third-person omniscient past tense.

 

WHAT I LIKED:

The story had a warm, fuzzy vibe to it from the very first sentence. I felt as if I knew and loved the characters. I particularly loved the similes:

Like loose change in a coffee tin.

Frost glazed the glass, glittering like crushed sugar.

This story had slipped past me like a cat burglar in socks.

 

I liked the character of Josh, even though he came across as a little odd. It was sweet that he got Hoss, a huge English mastiff, because he promised his mother that he would fill the house with love.

I particularly liked the scenes between Josh and baby Maggie. The narrator, through Josh’s actions, tells us how easy it is to care for an infant. You fed them, you changed them, you held them close. You kept them safe. You loved them.

 

Some more quotes that I liked:

When you pull on the past, it doesn’t come back gentle. It comes back hungry.

Sometimes when a man stops pacing, it means he's found a place to stand.

Order is a comforting thing, but it’s fragile. And when it cracks, strange, even miraculous things have a way of slipping through.

 

The book ends with fun recipes for Hoss’s Favourite Dog Treats, Josh’s Bologna Sandwiches, Josh’s Grilled Cheese Sandwiches and Mama’s Homemade Lasagna, all written with dollops of affection and humour intertwined with life lessons and some easy philosophy.

 

WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE:

I felt a little note of dissonance when Heather and Josh met. Josh was so kind, and Heather’s animosity felt forced. Of course, the reasons are explained later, but I never got over my dislike of her.

There is an element of the fantastical that runs through this book, which is unfortunately not pursued. We learn early on that Josh has the power to heal, but it isn’t used with any kind of significance. The fact that he has the power to heal should have played a greater role in the plot.

 

WHAT DIDN’T WORK FOR ME:

The story felt very old-fashioned, even though it is set in 2006. There was no mention of mobile phones or the Internet or anything that would root it in this century.

 

ALL SAID AND DONE:

This was a sweet and gentle story well told.

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.)

Book Review: BRILLIANT DISGUISE

Title: Brilliant Disguise (Charlie McClung Mysteries #1) 
Author: Mary Anne Edwards
Publisher: 338
Pages: Sellem Books
Goodreads rating: ⭐⭐

Marian Selby is just settling in for a quiet night when she hears a gunshot and then screams. These are followed by police sirens. Marian’s dear friend, Dianne Pannell, is taken to the hospital, where she dies on the operating table. Dan, her husband, seems distraught, and Katie, their 6-year-old, is screaming. Amid the confusion arrives Maggie, a friend of Dan’s, and Chief of Police and Dan’s best friend, Perry Miller, who quickly closes the case, deeming it a suicide.

Detective Charlie McClung, who has sought a transfer to this quiet town, is surprised at the speed with which the case is closed. His suspicions are aroused further when Marian insists that Dianne was being abused by Dan, and that her death was a murder.

The book, set in June 1982, is written in the 3^rd person limited point of view of Marian, Charlie and Perry.

The prose is marred by awkward tenses in the same sentence.

I didn’t like the author giving us details about Marian’s physical beauty. As if she wouldn’t be real to the reader unless a man inventoried all her attractions. Why did the author have to make McClung register Marian’s beauty with so much emphasis, that too at the scene of a crime? Thankfully, Marian found it inappropriate. 

Earlier on, we learn that Marian has a bookcase, spanning a whole wall, and that she loves reading. She even wears a T-shirt, with the legend, So many books, so little time, when she first meets McClung. But thereafter we never catch her with a book throughout the story. 

On the contrary, she bakes and cooks entirely too much. There were several long descriptions of the meals she cooks for McClung, complete with emotions awry and lengthy descriptions of meals and endless carafes of coffee.

I appreciated the fact that Marian had a strong faith in God. She emphasises her faith and trusts in God to look after her. When she is stressed after Dianne is shot, she keeps repeating the Lord’s Prayer to herself.

But the rest of her attitude was highly uncharitable and unchristian. She actually shudders when she sees Maggie rub “her man hands with lotion.” That was crass.

I liked the fact that she was 47. Older people aren’t often represented in novels. But her reaction to the onset of menopause was entirely caricaturish. The author made her out to be a snivelling mess of emotions, which is not what menopausal women are like. For the most part, the book is entirely frothy and light, until Marian’s grief gets the better of her.

Marian cries all the time, blaming it conveniently on her inability to get over Lee and on menopause.

On a side note, I wonder why Americans use so much tissue paper. Here Marian plows her way through whole boxes of the stuff, with McClung conjuring up tissues whenever it seems like she is going to cry. Why can’t she use a cloth handkerchief? It can be used, washed and re-used, and is so much better for the environment.

There was another mistake. In one sentence, Officer Stokes is the subject. The next sentence uses the pronoun, he. Naturally, I thought the pronoun referred to Officer Stokes, but, no, it referred to Detective McClung.

One grammatically incorrect sentence talks of ‘empty bottles laying everywhere.’ Another tells us, ‘No one can be that good of an actor.’ One character is said to have sobbed like a little girl.

With Perry having closed the investigation, McClung knows that some foul play is at work. He promises Marian that he has some connections of his own to call on. But the promised connections are not called on until the 87 percent mark in the book.

The insipid romance overshadows the murder investigation. McClung shares the autopsy report with Marian, and seems completely besotted, doing very little by way of investigation. Marian claims to be determined to nail the killer. But she lets the romance and the cooking sidetrack her all the time. The characters indulge in far too much eating and drinking.

I know it’s 1982, and forensic science isn’t as advanced as it is today. But Marian is actually daft enough to wash away the incriminating muddy footprints in her yard.

There’s even a subplot about Marian’s dead husband, Lee, encouraging her to begin a new phase of her life with McClung.

All said and done, I couldn’t care about Marian. She was projected as an epitome of perfection, cooking and baking with elan.

McClung too is rather tepid. As a cop, he doesn’t get to do anything. The details of the drug deal were never revealed, even though some drama was created.

The title makes no sense. Nor did the drop of blood on the watch dial on the cover. This wasn’t a Cozy Mystery at all. Just cozy fiction.

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.)