Penny runs her own health food store in Mojo, Louisiana, which is a little town that gets pretty crowded during the annual Voodoo Festival when the aficionados come to town, with dolls, snakes and sacrificial chickens. Another thing hotting up Penny’s hometown is private investigator BJ, who believes Penny didn’t do it and tries to help- of course this being a Stephanie Bond, they are often distracted my their smoking chemistry.
Kooks for your Kindle?– What makes this a good whodunnit is that there are many tertiary characters, all of whom have suspicion cast upon them at some point, even if it’s just a hint. I was glad not to have guessed the answer. The end result left most of these characters still with a little mystery, and as there is already a sequel, we know why. Highlights include the aforementioned other woman, tarty Sheena, a walking advertisement for her own tanning shop; Guy, Penny’s sexually confused shop assistant; and Mona, Penny’s vindictive former mother-in-law and town Mayor, which gives her ample opportunities to mess with Penny’s business.
The Bella-Swan-Pathetically-Self-Sacrificing-Factor– Penny’s no pushover, and not above a bit of vindictiveness herself when the urge takes her, but on the whole she’s trying to move on after a painful betrayal and get her life back on track. Thankfully she doesn’t rely on man alone (BJ) to rescue her, and does her own digging to help clear her name.
Painting a picture for your paperback?– It’s surprisingly atmospheric, the claustrophobic nature of the small town with everything in sight or at least in walking distance, and especially the voodoo festival. The sounds and smells of the nightly events are brought to life vividly and the Instruments of Death and Voodoo Museum next to Penny’s shop is suitably eerie. Despite the quintessential readable frothiness of the book, there are dark forces at work, and some disturbing bits. Let’s just say it did nothing to quell my fear of snakes…
Nookie for your Nook?– But of course!
Evaluation of your eBook?– It’s a quickie; it only took me three or four hours to devour it (but I do read horribly fast, it gets expensive…). If it wasn’t for the snake thing, it would make me want to head for the steamy cajun south and have some yummy fried food. All in all it’s an absorbing, light, fun, spooky read with lots of intriguing, possibly murderous characters. Not too pricey either.
Frothy Ranking: 4/5 cocktails.
Can be obtained from:
UK: £1.92
US: $2.99
Katie thinks she is living her life to the full, running her own clothing store, arranging fashion shows, and cohabiting in London with her career-driven boyfriend, Sam. But in the space of a fortnight her outlook changes completely, due to her unusual sister Isabel (Bells) visiting while their parents go mysteriously off the grid. Bells normally lives in a residential community in Wales, and despite her regular letters to Katie, hasn’t seen her or heard from her for a long time. Katie doesn’t understand why she’s kept her own family distant, avoided her lovable sister for so long, and why she hasn’t mentioned her to Sam or any of her London friends. In seeing things from Bells’s (uninhibitedly outspoken) perspective for a while, getting reacquainted with her, and keeping her safe, Katie comes to see what’s missing from her life and her relationship. But is it too late to fix things?
Regular viewers may notice that Frothy Reads is partial to a revenge tale, however this one is a very grown-up, low key affair. At forty-seven years of age, Rose loses both her husband of twenty-five years and her editing job to her assistant Minty. Nathan claims to need freedom, but it’s Rose who gains freedom while Nathan is bewitched into a greater trap. In the meantime, each of their grown-up children are entertaining thoughts of marriage while coming to terms with their parents’ breakup and their father’s betrayal of their mother. 
on Amazon and 
Some men forget their wife’s birthday, or to buy milk. Vaughan has forgotten his entire personal life. It starts on a London train, where he sits confused, having unknowingly suffered a psychogenic fugue, not knowing who he is, where he lives, or anything else about his personal life. Finding a hospital, he is finally claimed by a friend, reintroduced to his life and discovers love at first sight- with the woman he is divorcing. This hilarious and wise story tells of how he gradually regains his memories, why he lost them in the first place, and how he fights to win back his wife and kids.
, another amnesiac tale (not yet reviewed here), but this is totally different in tone and type of amnesia, less thriller, more philosophical rom-com, plus it’s laugh-out-loud funny.
Four old friends facing their dreaded fortieth birthdays are reminded of a pact they’d made as school girls twenty-five years earlier- to go on a cruise together. However two of them aren’t speaking to each other, and none of them have any money to speak of. Roz is in a dead end job and struggling to trust and appreciate her lovely man, having been betrayed in the past. Olive is living a life of servitude to her lazy husband and his family, while supporting them by cleaning other people’s houses too. Formerly gregarious Frankie has mysteriously left the area to live a quiet life miles away. Ven has had a hard couple of years having lost both parents and a bad husband, but is determined to get the girls together for her birthday, honouring their pact. 
Back to the other side of the Atlantic for this lovely Oklahoma tale of a woman getting her groove back. Trudy is fast approaching forty, heavier than she’d like to be, and has been taken advantage of for the last twenty years. At her elderly Aunt Gert’s funeral she overhears some home truths from a couple of mean cousins while she’s hiding in the titular ladies’ room addressing a wardrobe malfunction. Her husband of twenty years has been cheating on her the whole time with the whole town’s knowledge, her daughter eloped to Vegas with an unsuitable man, she’s frumpier than her 39 years, and is generally considered a doormat. 
– a traditional southern woman over-eager to please her unappreciative husband, overweight due to a bad relationship with food, who then finally flips. There are also echoes of the wholesome heroine in 
on Amazon.
Irish actress Annie is only twenty-eight years old but wondering what happened to her life- she married the love of her life and lived a fun life in Dublin with a promising career for a while, before finding herself living in the sticks, in the middle of a veterinary practice in a home that’s not her own and overrun with people. Dan is Annie’s husband and took over his late father’s practice three years earlier, and also took over the large family home from his mother- on the condition that they didn’t change a thing. Annie has a part time job but is left to her own devices most of the time while Dan works long hours and the house is invaded by her unemployed young sister-in-law, her interfering mother-in-law, vet colleagues and various neighbours. When opportunity knocks, Annie takes the chance to act in a Broadway play for a year and when the distance takes its toll they decide to take a marriage break for a year.
This book falls firmly into the ‘Much more Substantial’ category here on Frothy Reads, both in size and tone. It’s nice to get your teeth into something with a bit more scope occasionally and this one kept me busy for a week over the holidays. As a teen in the 1960s, Lauren was sitting in her tree house dreaming of boys when she witnessed her mother murder a strange man in the garden. In the present day Lauren and her siblings are seeing their mother, Dorothy, begin to fade away and try to solve the mystery of that hot summer day. Gradually the story unfolds through flashbacks to the 1940s and Lauren’s present day sleuthing. Dorothy escaped her stifling upbringing and came to work in London during World War 2, joining her sweetheart Jimmy, where they planned their ideal future with a house in the country and lots of children. Photographer Jimmy struggled to keep Dorothy’s feet on the ground and make ends meet for him and his ailing father, while saving for his future with Dorothy and documenting the horrors of war-time London.
, and ebooks for
Got some catching up to do here, as this book has been out for a couple of years and there is already a sequel- but there’s no rush. This seasonal English tale focuses mainly on the lives of four characters from one Christmas to the next. City girl and teacher Marianne starts off engaged to too-good-to-be-true Luke, who soon shows his bad side, leaving her finding her feet in a Shropshire village that rejoices in the name of Hope Christmas. Gabriel lives there too, but he’s a returnee, reclaiming his roots as a sheep farmer and making a new home for his young son after his wife abandoned them both. Meanwhile in London, engineer and father of four Noel is feeling increasingly lost as his job forces him to work on an environmentally disastrous project near Hope Christmas, and his wife Cat is too busy to focus on him. Cat however, has problems of her own, the au-pair from hell, a blogging career gone crazy, and a mother showing frightening signs of dementia. Events hop back and forth between the Christmas period one year, and the whole of the following year leading up to Christmas again, where their lives converge.
from Amazon.
Mistletoe in Manhattan- Talli Roland
from Amazon US.
Bah, Humbug! Heather Horrocks
! Lexi is a TV homebody, a younger (unincarcerated) Martha Stewart. She gets by as a single mother to her two kids who are both fans of childrens’ mystery writer Kyle Miller. Just before Christmas they move to a nicer house that Lexi can finally afford- to discover Kyle is their next door neighbour and that he tried to hide a gun in their snowman- purely in the interests of research, fortunately. When Kyle turns out to be a lonely man on a book deadline with a sad family history, Lexi takes him on as a Christmas project; healing the problems with his father and brothers, and helping him regain his Christmas spirit. It’s a cute little love story, with interesting characters. 
Santa Maybe – Scarlett Bailey