Review: A Hard Day for a Hangover

A Hard Day for a Hangover by Darynda Jones
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

The finale to the Sunshine Vicram trilogy. I guess it is possible to read this as a stand-alone (I haven't read the first book), but I wouldn't recommend it.

Sunshine Vicram is the sheriff of her small hometown, a single mother of Auri, a precocious teen who insists on trying to investigate mysteries on her own. (view spoiler)[Sunshine has recently discovered that Auri was not as a result of her abduction and rape as a teenager, but instead the result of a night of passion with Levi Ravinder. She has also discovered that she was effectively press-ganged into taking the job as sheriff by a cabal of local people (including her own parents) who secretly run the town (although not very well given previous events LOL) and has been co-opted as the leader of said secret society. (hide spoiler)]

A call comes in that a young girl has been found half-way down a ravine by a hunter, badly beaten and barely clothed, Sunshine and her team have to mount a rescue, assisted by the mysterious Levi Ravinder, Sunshine's long-term crush. No-one can identify the girl, who is in a coma, but Auri recalls the school mean girl mentioning a cousin who was supposed to visit and never arrived - could this be the girl? Then Sunshine hears of two other girls who have either gone missing or been injured near the ravine - are they connected?

I haven't looked back at my review for the second book, but I suspect it says something very similar to this one. There is just too much going on, it's unnecessary and, in my opinion, not very funny. First off, the secret society - totally unnecessary. Second, the 'humorous' signs which start each chapter - funny once, thereafter irritating and bear no resemblance to the plot. Third, the rivalry between Levi and his no-good uncle and his other uncle being in prison for a crime he didn't commit - should have been resolved in the previous book and ended in a totally ludicrous OTT scene. Finally, would a precocious child, like Auri, really get words confused all the time?

I suspect that this sort of thing works a bit better in Darynda Jones' paranormal series Charley Davidson where characters are expected to be OTT and enigmatic - doesn't work so well for a small-town businessman. I see that Darynda says this series was intended to be Gilmore Girls meets Fargo, I think the issue with that is that the Gilmore Girls was all about the dialogue and the plot was quite gentle, trying to smash it into a decade-old abduction mystery, a romance, several disappearances, and a family feud is just manic.

In my opinion this would have benefitted from a few plot strands being ditched, maybe just leaving a wise-cracking sheriff?

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.


View all my reviews