anxious
Sunny Side Up by Sonia ParinMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
Maybe a 2.5 but this one just didn't work for me. I nearly stopped reading but was over 50% so I kept on since it was short. The premise isn't bad. Eve is heading to her Aunt Mira's home off the coast of Maine after divorcing her husband who embezzled from her restaurant and right off the bat this novel has some weak world building. She says she did salvage it but then sold it and we’re never sure why because she doesn’t seem to be looking for a new start really. She seems to want to visit her aunt just to take some time off. She might want to get a job on the island, even looks at a bookstore that’s for sale (bafflingly at the end of the novel mentions she’s not a reader and eye rolls at her aunt’s books as Mira is a famous romance author).
However, her Aunt isn’t there, but someone has messed up the house which is where she runs into Jill, a young artist who also helps clean Mira’s home. Eve immediately begins to show just how bad her judgment is and how weirdly this is written. First, she yells at Jill not to touch anything because of fingerprints once the police get there, then never calls the police and they put the books away. She doesn’t seem overly concerned that Mira is gone because she’s a traveler but no one, not Eve, not Jill nor Mira’s travel agent knew Mira would be traveling nor is she answering her phone. This doesn’t seem to send up a red flag that something is wrong.
Not until after Eve’s ex husband is found dead in Mira’s kitchen and the detective, Jack Bradford (who the blurb cringingly calls ‘swoon worthy’) is dispatched to investigate. Eve immediately is upset she’s a suspect even though she did mention wanting to kill her ex for what he did, understandably so. She also immediately decides that the police won’t bother to solve the case and/or are too stupid to do it, so she must do it. She makes a lot of these bizarre and stupid leaps of logic. There was no incompetence on Jack’s part when this decision is made.
Her investigation seems to be to blame everyone, especially Jill and then goes and lives with Jill because she’s afraid of being home alone. That’s understandable but living with Jill, someone you don’t know and keep accusing of things makes no sense. I’m not even sure why Jill allows it. At one point Eve even says that you can’t approach this logically because murder isn’t logical. That one nearly made me stop reading.
It wasn’t hard to figure out who the killer was since there wasn’t many suspects to begin with. The tension with Mira being missing ended up feeling very contrived. And one last thing that really bugs me was that she’s not on the island for more than a day when no less than three strangers tell her to not stay because there are no available men to date. Is this normal? I sure hope not. I’m not sure I’d continue with this series.
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