46. Open Season by Linda Howard

listened to Audio - Chirp
read by Deborah Hazlett
Unabridged audio (8:47)
2001 Pocket Books
320 pgs.
Adult romance with a bit of mystery....fun!
Finished 5/17/2019
Goodreads rating:  4.01 - 17,200
My rating: 4
Setting: 2001 Alabama

First line/s:  from prologue:  "Carmela nervously clutched the burlap bag that heeld her other dress, some water, and a small package of food she had been able to save for the trip north, across the border."
from Chapter 1:  " 'Daisy, breakfast is ready!' "

My comments:  This book was a riot!  I snickered and guffawed all the way through it.  It was a mystery and it was a romance (quite sexy, actually, for its 2001 copyright) and it was a makeover story, all rolled into one...and it was loads of fun.  The narrator, Deborah Hazlett, used just the right touch of southern/Alabaman accent to really pull the whole thing off.  Greatly enjoyed it!

Goodreads synopsis:  On her thirty-fourth birthday, Daisy Minor decides to make over her entire life. The small-town librarian has had it with her boring clothes, her ordinary looks, and nearly a decade without so much as a date. It's time to get a life—and a sex life. The perennial good girl, Daisy transforms herself into a party girl extraordinaire—dancing the night away at clubs, laughing and flirting with abandon—and she's declared open season for manhunting. But her free-spirited fun turns to shattering danger when she witnesses something she shouldn't—and becomes the target of a killer. Now, before she can meet the one man who can share her life, first she may need him to save it.     
          Seamlessly blending heart-pounding romance and breathless intrigue, Linda Howard delivers a stylish and provocative novel that absolutely defies readers to put it down.

31. The Jasmine Trade - Denise Hamilton

Eve Diamond, LA Investigative Reporter, Book 1
Pinnacle Books, Kensington Publishing, 2001
pap $6.99
328 pgs (with about 20 more following the story, the first of book number 2, The Sugar Skull.)
For : Adults
Rating:  5

Eve Diamond is 29, smart, quick, and  little bit dare-devilish.  She writes for the LA Times, particularly in the San Gabriel Valley. Her JOB is to horn her way into people's lives so she can get the down and dirty.  And she does her job well.

The whole suburban area around LA is the setting, and Denise Hamilton uses it well.  The descriptions became so real that I found a suburban LA map and spent a good hour pouring over it, glad to have it handy when I encountered a new place that Eve had to cover.  She describes her home in Silverlake so well, I can hear it, see it, smell it.

The book begins when she is asked to write a story about a 17 year old Chinese-American girl that was murdered during a car jacking.  The girl was rich and pretty, but only Eve sensed that there was more to the story than a simple car jacking.  Along the way I learned so much, about "parachute kids", kids whose parents have moved them to southern California to go to good schools to get into good colleges, ensconcing them in huge, fancy, homes....and then going back to China or Hong Kong or Malaysia and being a long-distant parent.  I learned about Asian gangs, brothels, and the kidnapping sex trade......as bad as the slave trade from Africa.  It was well written, and every single one of my questions was answered by the end of the book.  Nothing was left hanging.  Characters became real, hearing Eve's thoughts were an added bonus.

This was a great story, truly interesting, informative, well-written, and suspenseful.  I can't wait to read number two!