WARNING: This is book one of the Ivy Malone Mystery Series. So just keep in mind that it’s part of a series if you decide to buy it and read it.
Hello, fellow booklovers. Let me start off by saying that the description for this book ended up being a little misleading, but I definitely enjoyed it in spite of that. Here’s the description from Amazon.com:
She’s not your average crime fighter!
Ivy Malone has a curiosity that sometimes gets her into trouble, and it’s only aggravated by her discovery that she can easily escape the public eye. So when vandals romp through the local cemetery, she takes advantage of her newfound anonymity and its unforeseen advantages as she launches her own unofficial investigation.
Despite her oddball humor and unconventional snooping, Ivy soon becomes discouraged by her failure to turn up any solid clues. And after Ivy witnesses something ominous and unexplained, she can’t resist putting her investigative powers to work again. Even the authorities’ attempts to keep Ivy out of danger and her nosy neighbor’s match-making schemes can’t slow her down. But will the determination that fuels this persistent, quirky sleuth threaten her very safety?
*MINOR SPOILER WARNING: If you want to be completely surprised when you read this book, don’t read any farther. I will not reveal any big spoilers, only a few things that show what was misleading about the description (to me, at least). You have been forewarned.*
So now that we got that out of the way, let us begin. First off, my interpretation of this description was that Ivy Malone finds out that she can turn invisible.
I quickly found out that Ivy Malone was not a teenager, a twenty- or even thirty-something-year-old, but was a… well, she was somewhere between sixty and seventy, I believe. Never figured that out for sure. However, because I had already gotten connected to her as only awesome authors can do, I continued to read, and soon found out she was not literally invisible, she was LOL invisible. No, no, not laugh out loud. Little old lady.
Trust me, I didn’t come up with that myself. There’s a reason I kept reading.
So maybe the character wasn’t what I was expecting, but other than that, this book was awesome! Lorena McCourtney kept me on the edge of my seat with her awesome suspense building, whether it was with the mystery or with the slight bit of romance mixed in. And of course, all that humor… I was LOL-ing while reading about a LOL.
And then the quotable moments, of course.
“…if I had to spend the next three months hiding in a closet eating grits.”
“‘BLOL.’ ‘What?’ ‘Busybody Little Old Lady.'”
“The good Samaritan with a gun. I didn’t stop to ponder the inconsistencies inherent in that.”
There were so many more awesome funny spots and memorable quotes in this book that I’d have to reread it and highlight (on my Kindle) if I wanted to find them all. And Lorena McCourtney has an awesome way with words. There’s also a lot of good messages in this book, and Ivy Malone’s faith is so strong and such a great example. Read it.
There is some mention of blood, bullet wounds, murder, death, uh, Ivy visits a morgue, and she also does some crazy LOL things, like camping out in a cemetery, but no gory descriptions of any of that. And the ending definitely entices you to read the next book. 😉
Oh, and did I mention that it’s free on Kindle? 😉
So go read it! You’ll enjoy it, that’s for sure!
The World Of The Writer 