I don’t know what to say about this novel. Seriously, I am speechless — which is a fate I wish would have befallen Blake O’Hara Heart, the heroine of this book. Her endless asides, constant opinions, and ceaseless “charming” Southern chatter just about did me in. I kept wishing someone would kill the woman just to shut her up.

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It is the Heart’s tenth anniversary. Blake plans to celebrate by giving her husband Harry an ultimatum – either put me before your political career or give me a separation. Her plans however go horribly awry when her best friend Vivi calls – Vivi thinks she has just killed her lover and needs Harry and Blake to help her deal with any legal (and emotional) entanglements. It takes about three pages just to learn this because we have to hear about how Vivi and Blake met in third grade and have been inseparable since and how Southern women don’t get themselves involved in scandals except discreetly.

Harry and Blake, both lawyers, realize their client is in a heap of trouble since she left the crime scene. They advise her to meet them at Mother’s and head there themselves. At this point we learn that Mother “Meredith Blakely Fletcher is my (Blakes’s) maternal grandmother and the matriarch of everything.” I have no idea what being the matriarch of everything means but I do know that we proceed to learn that Mother has a real rags to riches story, that Harry’s grandfather was the law partner to Mother’s husband (Hank and Frank Attorneys At Law) and that Mother’s house is Blake’s favorite place to be. Queue a long list of why the house is in a great location, then we finally meet Vivi.

I won’t drag you through the whole muck of what happened with Vivi or how and where and by whom she was raised. Cutting through the chase she met her lover Lewis, who happens to be Harry’s brother and the play-by-play announcer for Crimson Tide football, at the Fountain Mist Motel. It takes pages to get to this but eventually we learn that when she arrived he was wearing a holster with a sex toy named Deputy Dick sitting where the gun should be. Apparently Deputy Dick is made of sterner stuff than Lewis since we learn that at some point Lewis turns purple and just stops. Mind you it is a pretty salacious couple of pages to reach the stopping point. Once Lewis turns purple, Vivi assumes she has killed him and calls Blake and Harry for help, too embarrassed, I assume, to go for 9-1-1. When Blake, Harry, Vivi, and the police go to room 106 to explain to the cops what has happened, the body it is gone.

Because of Lewis’s celebrity status there will need to be a press conference regarding his disappearance. Vivi of course can’t be put before the mic, and for reasons too numerous to mention Harry doesn’t want to do this, so Blake does it. And that is pretty much the first hundred pages in a nutshell.

Only it isn’t really because those hundred pages contain background information on every single person we meet and a few whom we don’t. We learn that Blake was once dating the cop named Sonny and that she considers him her detective (huh?). We learn Lewis’s convoluted work history. We learn about BBQ, high school pranks that proved our main characters are another b word than belle, and that Vivi’s plantation manor is called The Big House. We learn so much about so many people that my head was spinning at this point and the plot hadn’t even progressed into the investigation yet.

It never really does proceed to an investigation. There are a lot of meetings called to discuss minuscule pieces of evidence. The police act like their chief suspects are their best friends. And the only really interesting clues come from a call in tip line and a set of letters Blake happens to read by chance. Needless to say the mystery is big bust in this story.

And I don’t know how to say this without giving away part of the plot but it is illegal to cause a manhunt without having justifiable cause. At least in my state, the city will bill you for the man hours. Leaving aside the legal issue (perhaps Alabama hasn’t reached this point yet) it is immoral. The vast majority of communities are short police. There simply isn’t enough money in the budget. When you use them needlessly you are doing a disservice to all around you.

The characters are another bust. It is hard to like people so nasty. That’s okay, Blake loves herself enough to make up for any lack of love on the readers part.

”I know it and I agree with you,” I said. “But believe me there’s no way on God’s green earth that Brooks Mansion will ever be torn down. Not as long as I am breathing.” I was already sounding impressive.

Really? That was impressive? It gets better. It takes Blake two meetings to figure out that an anonymous tip means one with no name. She feels like she won some prize when her second request earns her the same information. This is how she proved her superiority at that instant, “I turned and swung my long dark hair at her and clicked my Jimmy Choos out of the newsroom. She wasn’t the only one with hot pink nail polish today.”

Because this story is told in the first person Blake is the one we know best but since she tells us everything she knows about every single person we get the opportunity to be underwhelmed by everyone around her. Harry is a caricature, the neglectful politician husband. Vivi is a piece of cardboard, a cutout to be placed where needed. Lewis is a piece of work – the kind of man who steals from his elderly mother and then borrows from another old woman to pay her back.

The lowest point however is Mother, Blake’s maternal grandmother. She not only wastes police time to spring a surprise that did not need that kind of secrecy but she spends quality page time at the end of the book on how the black sheep in the family should never be treated bad because they are family. I am sure she’s right. Why should someone resent their sister sleeping with their husband? Blood is thicker than water and all that.

The romance in this book isn’t much either. Blake has an affair towards the end of the novel after Harry has an almost affair which sets her off. The love story there is all told to us by the chatty Blake, never shown, so that in the end we wind up not feeling the love at all.

I like light fluffy books that don’t have much to them. I recently gave one a B. I expected to give this one a B. But you can’t spin together a light, frothy tale that is supposed to be sweet as Southern tea by shoveling law breaking, irresponsible, delusional mean people into a story about family feuds. That’s like trying to make sweet tea out of old socks. It just doesn’t work.

In conclusion all I can say is that editors’ love of small towns and series containing cliques with cute names have really reached rock bottom with this book. Avoid it. I wish I could have.