This book fits squarely into today’s popular trend of “spunky, fashion-challenged modern woman runs across a dead body and gets pulled into a complicated, dangerous situation where she finds romance.”Kozak fleshes out the heroine by making her a hopeful greeting card shop owner with unique family dynamics including a mother who lives in an ashram, an uncle who hosts poetry readings, and an institutionalized brother she helped raise, along with a Jewish Holocaust survivor whose posthumous voice still plays in the heroine’s head to provide her with at least a few moments of common sense. There are the requisite female sidekicks, too: one a black fashionista employed in the card shop and doing her best to undermine any atmosphere of professional retail, the other a former actress, stick-thin, with a rich hubby and a scar.Then there’s the hero, along with all the people in his orbit, including his traumatized young daughter (who doesn’t speak, so he had to break her out of the mental hospital) and the Mob. Oh, and there’s a ferret.Did I mention Dr. Cookie’s radio show and the Dating Project?I really enjoyed this book at first, if only for the ridiculousness and over-the-top descriptions of Wollie (short for Mary Wollstonecroft) Shelley, the heroine, and her friends. The stakes at the outset are the most believable part of the novel, as Wollie tries to get the humorless Mr. Bundt to overlook all her violations of the Welcome! Greetings franchise policies so that she’ll be upgraded to a Wilkommen! level, at which point she can buy her shop.After that, I gradually lost interest, until by the end of the book I had to force myself to finish. I just didn’t care about the characters and no longer found them charming: the infatuation wore off, just as Dr. Cookie said it would.Kozak’s writing style is smooth and provides a pleasant reading experience, with sharp descriptions and surprisingly sensible dialogue for the bizarre cast of characters. The plot complications in the main (suspense) line and the romance line alike are well written, with good pacing that would have contributed to building tension if I had been rooting for the hero and heroine. The plot seems organic, that is, naturally deriving from the characters and story events, even while being completely unrealistic. (That is obviously intentional on the author’s part and will undoubtedly contribute to the book’s appeal for other readers.)I wanted to like this novel and waited a long time, hoping to get past my fundamentally negative opinion of Wollie and her story, before writing this review. It’s just not happening for me. Your mileage may vary.
★★★★✩ I like to make greeting cards. In fact, my BFfL (best friend for life) insists on dragging me out of the house (and away from my books!) every now and then to a card-making class. I love a good mystery, too. Throw in a little romance and I’m ecstatic. Combining these three elements, the bases of this series, piqued my interest when I saw book #4 was on audio at my public library (everyone knows I’m addicted audiobooks).Since Debbie, one of my GRs friends, has a fit every time I start a series out of order, I thought it might actually be worth the effort for me to arrange an interlibrary transfer via my computer (the easy part) and physically go (the hard part) to my Brick & Mortar Public Library to retrieve the first in the Wollie Shelley Mysteries available to me only in the Dead Tree Version (hardback). Surprise! It was. What can I say? This is a fun book, with occasional touching moments. I thought the heroine was going to be TSTL when she instantly falls for a potential murderer, but she held my attention. Got to love a woman named after an eighteenth century feminist (Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley) who keeps a Regency Romance in her jacket pocket – just in case there’s time to read it.Time? That Wollie doesn’t find; there’s a lot happening in this book. There is also wit and charm; enough that I’ll be making another trek to the library for the second in the series. That’s saying something, since I’m the spoiled “Download Queen of Cyberspace” now. Ms. Kozak’s writing flows at a nice clip making it well worth the journey. I liked sentences like: “He hacked again, hard enough to rearrange his lungs.” I’ll keep you posted about the audiobook.
What do You think about Dating Dead Men (2004)?
This is an award winning book. It pulled in an Agatha, an Edgar and a Macavity for best first novel. I think it has a great title. It also seems to me that it was downhill from there. She knows how to write and was obviously influenced by Janet Evanovich - not a bad thing. But being zany is really tricky. Our heroine, Wollie, is trying to run a gift card shop at the same time that she is engaged in this marginally scientific project to date 40 guys in 60 days. Wow! Talk about zany. And she has a mentally ill brother? He is not amateur zany, he is certified. The possibilities are, unfortunately, endless. Her personal friends, like her dates and everyone she meets, are quirky. Margaret, the ferret, was OK but did little to really advance the story. It doesn't seem to me that there is enough story here for an entire book. The reviewers who were so fond of the book, saw something in her writing that eluded me. I actually wanted to like this book but found very little that I could seriously recommend to anyone. For the most part, it is a lighter than air read. I will not reveal what happened to Margaret.
—Bill Reinehr
This is a good light read. Those who like Janet Evanovich will probably enjoy this author. The plot was intriguing and kept me guessing most of the way through. The characters were funny, if not sometimes over the top with their antics. At times the similarities between the characters of Evanovich's Plum series and the characters in Dating Dead Men were a little too glaringly obvious. The main character, Wolley, is much like Stephanie Plum in that she acts brave while secretly being scared. She does crazy things and has crazy friends. And her love life gets her in trouble. Wolley's good friend and co-worker, Fredreeq, is much like Plum's friend Lula. She dresses outrageously and speaks her mind to everyone. Consequently, I found myself making too many comparisons between the authors and their books.Overall the book is well-written and enjoyable. Definitely a good choice when you're looking for something not too complicated, that will make you laugh and leave you feeling good at the end.
—Darcia Helle
Your belief in reality and your idea that humans are reasonably rational must be suspended to a certain extent while reading this suspense/romance/comedy, probably because to accomplish all 3 genres in one book, Kozak had to throw reality and rationality out the window. She also has to let the plot get out of control rather frequently.If you don't mind the unbelievability and you enjoy hearing about frequent wardrobe changes (most of few which put our hero in very inappropriate garb), fancy cars (there's a lot of driving all over LA and Ventura counties in this romp), trendy restaurants (how does she manage to fit into all those outfits?), and a varied, if somewhat stereotypical cast of characters, then you might like this book.
—Patty
