Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes by Denise Grover Swank

Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes (Rose Gardner Mystery #1)
Synopsis:

For Rose Gardner, working at the DMV on a Friday afternoon is bad even before she sees a vision of herself dead. She's had plenty of visions, usually boring ones like someone's toilet's overflowed, but she's never seen one of herself before. When her overbearing momma winds up murdered on her sofa instead, two things are certain: There isn't enough hydrogen peroxide in the state of Arkansas to get that stain out, and Rose is the prime suspect.

Rose realizes she's wasted twenty-four years of living and makes a list on the back of a Wal-Mart receipt: twenty-eight things she wants to accomplish before her vision comes true. She's well on her way with the help of her next door neighbor Joe, who has no trouble teaching Rose the rules of drinking, but won't help with number fifteen-- do more with a man. Joe's new to town, but it doesn't take a vision for Rose to realize he's got plenty secrets of his own.

Somebody thinks Rose has something they want and they'll do anything to get it. Her house is broken into, someone else she knows is murdered, and suddenly, dying a virgin in the Fenton County jail isn't her biggest worry after all.

Review:

This book was a lot of fun. For some reason I thought it would be more serious, maybe because of the whole death prediction, but it really wasn't. It wasn't completely over the top ridiculous, but light-hearted fun. I loved how Rose's visions were rarely anything super important like you would normally see. I also enjoyed how she just blurts out what she sees and because they are so random it just makes it a bit ridiculous.

I like Joe and guessed what was going on with him pretty early on, though of course not in extreme detail since you don't really know what exactly is happening until pretty late in the book. Their back and forth, not quite sure if they should trust the other person or what the other person was up to was fun to watch. Obviously they both liked each other, and I liked how it wasn't insta love they are going to move in together and get married and be happily ever after. It was more realistic, but still kind of silly at times.  Oh the other thing I liked about Rose was her whole strange what is evil what is not thing. Like I know she gets that from her mom, but talking about drinking a beer for the first time and stuff was quite humorous. Stuff that people do everyday, but she has never done, were fun to explore through her thoughts.

The one character I didn't really like was Violet. Really Rose's mom was horrible, but she is supposed to be. I couldn't quite figure out if you should hate Violet as well or not. I know Rose is grateful to her for a lot, but Violet really wasn't supportive of the changes in Rose.They are still sisters and obviously care about each other, but I will be curious to see how their relationship is in the next books if Rose keeps growing and changing as a person.

The main thing I liked was the light-hearted tone of the book. Everything Rose did seemed to make things worse, when really it was all just coincidental. It was a fun read and I look forward to reading more by the author.

Rating: ★ ★ ★1/2