Eloise Palmer

“Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes”

by Denise Grover Swank

I always love a good mystery, but this time I was in the mood for a mystery that was a little less rough and maybe a little more feminine. As I shuffled up and down each row of the mystery section at Barnes & Noble I stumbled upon Denise Grover Swank’s Rose Gardner series. After reading the first book in the series “Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes” I knew I was hooked. I quickly purchased the second novel “Twenty-Nine and a Half Reasons” and just finished it this month.

Plot: Rose Gardner works at the local DMV in her small town home of Henryetta, Ark. Rose has been cursed, as her mother would say, with “the sight.” She has sporadic visions of unimportant events that usually take place in the future. However, on a rainy Friday afternoon at the DMV Rose began to feel the all-to-familiar tingle of another vision coming on. For the first time ever Rose has a vision of herself lying dead on her own couch. As she comes out of the vision Rose realizes that her killer is staring her in the face at the DMV. Filled with panic and fear Rose begins to realize how little she has done in her 24 years. That night she quickly makes a list of 29 things she hopes to accomplish before she dies leaving the 29th item blank.

Rose has lived under a rock her whole life thanks to her mean ole’ Southern momma who makes Rose wait on her hand and foot and calls her things like evil and demon possessed.

Now all she hopes to accomplish before she’s murdered is to have her own cell phone and maybe even receive her very first kiss. Rose continues to go about her days as normal until one afternoon when she walks inside to find her mother lying on the couch in a pool of her own blood. Looks like Rose got her last vision a little mixed up! Of course now everyone thinks Rose is guilty of killing her own mother, and her reckless acts that follow don’t seem to help her case.

Rose continues on after her mother’s death and tries to get a feel for what life is really like for a young adult living in the south during the 20th century. She and her handsome new neighbor, Joe, become quickly acquainted with one another and Rose soon realizes that Joe just might be the one to help her accomplish some of the items on her wish list. Joe, however, has a few secrets of his own.

A few weeks later someone breaks in to Roses house in middle of the night looking for a very important piece of evidence they believe to be hiding in her house. Fast forward a few days and someone else Rose knows in Henryetta is murdered. Suddenly Rose realizes that her “list of things to accomplish before death” is the least of her concern.

Why would you recommend this book: I recommend this book because it kept me on my toes 90 percent of the time. Denise Grover Swank writes a good mystery that isn’t about blood and guts from cover to cover. She includes a good love story, some humor, and some really intriguing suspense as well. So far the series is light hearted and easy to read.

That moment you were on the edge of your seat: This is a tough one because there were honestly so many occasions where I was chomping at the bit to find out what was about to happen in the story. In the beginning, I was dying to find out when, where, why and how Rose was going to be murdered. Throughout the book Rose would have visions and I would find myself turning each page faster and faster to find out what was going to happen. Toward the end of the book I was constantly on the edge of my seat as Rose found herself getting closer and closer to find out who the real killer was.

Lasting impressions: For me, the most lasting impression was the fact that even though Rose Gardner had very few life experiences before the death of her mother, she grew to be an independent and courageous young woman. She had to face a lot of tragic incidences throughout the novel and remained strong and fearless the whole time even if she had to talk herself through most of it.

What are your reading next?

“The Invention of Wings” by Sue Monk Kidd Eloise Palmer is a marketing consultant for Custom-Bilt in Shreveport.

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