“It had been over a year since I'd last read a Bubbles book, and clearly my memory sucked. Lucky for readers, throughout this novel there are references to earlier novels in the series, so you'll be caught up. Apparently, in the previous novel, BUBBLES BETROTHED, hairdresser/journalist Bubbles Yablonsky's daughter Jane had been kidnapped. Now Jane's undergone a personality transformation, scared to be left alone, and screwed up to the point that seemingly the only way she could improve is for her parents - Bubbles and the skeevy Dan `Chip' Ritter - to remarry. The author's acknowledgment page mentions a `hellish year': I don't know the details, but for a supposedly humorous novel, the tone is rather dour - Bubbles has problems big-time. The main worry is that a woman in the salon Bubbles works at part-time dies from hair extensions with mistaken latex glue. Bubbles's boss at the newspaper doesn't want her investigating, but of course she does. The novel was actually quite interesting, until I came to the final chapter. In the acknowledgments, the author mentions a `radical twist', and indeed it is. But it is also extremely unlikely. Now, when Karin Slaughter pulled a radical twist in SKIN PRIVILEGE (published in the U.S. as BEYOND REACH), she put a super-secret letter on her website to explain things to readers. Ms Strohmeyer didn't leave a note with a secret URL, so I'll have to do some investigating. But the final chapter aside, this novel is actually a pretty good read: even if you do want to knock some sense into the characters.”
Tez Miller wrote this review Tuesday, December 25 2007.
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