Where I share my love of books with reviews, features, giveaways and memes. Family and needlepoint are thrown in from time to time.

Friday, October 5, 2012

Scrambled by Kathryn Jones (Book Review)

Title: Scrambled
Author: Kathryn Elizabeth Jones

About the Book: What happens to an unhappy woman who leaves her husband only to discover that she may have just made a terrible mistake? So horrible, her choice threatens to end her very life?

Susan believes that the grass is greener on the other side. Not that her current life is bad, necessarily; it’s just boring and lifeless, kind of like the old matted rug on her dining room floor. Susan thinks her marriage has just grown—well, old. Her husband, Bob, has gained tremendous weight and continues to gain, and his health suffers. She must work at a job she hates full-time to provide the little sustenance they have. He, on the other hand, works very little (because of his health) and prefers spending his days watching television or surfing the Internet. Besides, there’s her problem of not getting pregnant that can’t help but contribute to his unhappiness.

Can Susan continue to live her life at the hotel knowing that she might be killed herself or imprisoned for life? Will she be able to find the real murderer with the help of the eccentric Ms. Martha Boaz?


My thoughts: So one day Susan just leaves her job and her husband, gets on a bus, and begins a new life as Jenny.  She easily gets a job cleaning hotel rooms at a cheap, but once glamorous, hotel.  The tenants are strange, but it allows her to keep a low profile and begin to put some money away until she really begin her new life. 

There is the man across the hall who seems to have developed a crush on her; the salesman who never seems to make any sales and leaves his room immaculate; the slob who lives down the hall whose room always has a bad odor, and the manager, who lives in a plush attic room that gives Susan the creeps.  The owner of the hotel doesn't live there, but seems to show up and walk the halls all the time.

When one of the tenants is found dead in the basement, the owner cons Susan into helping him move the body so that it won't be connected to the hotel. Susan starts to receive threatening notes afterwards and realizes that someone is trying to pin the murder on her.  She decides that her only options are returning to her husband (NO) or trying to figure out who the murderer is herself.

With that, the author starts you down a road with many twists and some surprises as Susan stumbles across more dead bodies, people who aren't whom they seem, and life presenting her with choices she didn't know she had.  I liked Susan and for some reason pictured her as Kristin Wiig and couldn't get that image out of my head!  

This was a debut book for Kathryn Jones and the first in the Susan Sleuth Mystery Series. If you like cozy mysteries, then you should give this one a shot!



~I received a complimentary ecopy of this book from the author in exchange for my unbiased review.~

About the author:  A published writer since 1987, she has published various newspaper and magazine articles for teens and adults.

When she is not writing she's reading. A member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, she is an avid reader of the scriptures and books of spiritual merit. She has been married 30 years and enjoys teaching and working with youth and children-including her own three girls,three grand-daughters and grandson.

Connect with Kathryn:


Publisher/Publication Date: CreateSpace, August 2012
ISBN: 9781461188087
250 pages

2 comments:

Vicki said...

Sounds like a fun read!! I think I'd like to read it soon.

Kathryn Elizabeth Jones said...

Vicki,

I hope you do! Thank you for reading this post.

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