Review: Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes by Denise Grover Swank

“This book was so much fun, full of unexpected adventures and a lot of laughs, it was utterly charming…” ~ Under the Covers

Psychic visions, mysterious and sexy neighbours, murders and a list. Welcome to a week in the life of Rose Gardner. Before this week, the previous 24 years of Rose’s life has been boring and full of verbal abuse from her demanding momma. However, one frightening psychic vision showing Rose her own death changes everything…

I need to take a deep breath and a nice cup of tea after reading this, it was packed so full of adventure as our poor heroine Rose seems to dash and stumble and embroil herself into trouble, all it seems quite by accident. I couldn’t help but be caught up in all the excitement and a bit of panic right a long side her.

But, it wasn’t just a roller coaster of clambering out of windows and fending off bad guys, I loved Rose’s personal journey as she learns to stand up for herself and finally make decisions about her life without being told what to do from her mean momma and her loving but take-charge older sister. This gave it a nice balance of fast paced excitement and a little bit of self discovery and character development.

Then there is the romance between Rose and her mysterious next door neighbour Joe. I admit, I guessed exactly what mystery he was hiding fairly early on into the book but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the ever growing attraction between them. But if you are looking for a sexy book though, this isn’t going to be it; however, the lack of throbbing bodily parts and buckets of bodily fluids didn’t detract from the chemistry between Joe and Rose.

This book was so much fun, full of unexpected adventures and a lot of laughs, it was utterly charming and I will definitely be moving on to read the next book in the series.