Claudia Carroll
William Morrow
October, 2011 / ISBN: 978-0-06-204515-7
Contemporary Novel
Amazon
Reviewed
by Elaine Broome
If This Is Paradise,
I Want My Money Back
makes me wish for summer. Picture it
nice sunny day, lounge
chair, little umbrella drink, and a fun, frothy book to complete
the perfection. Well, this is that book. Claudia Carroll's novel
has a little bit of everything; great characters, lots of laughs,
and a few tears along the way. It tells the story of Charlotte Grey,
an ordinary woman who's run into some very bad luck. After a blazing
argument with her no-good, lying, cheating boyfriend (the slimy
James Kane), Charlotte has an accident
a devastating accident
and finds herself in, well, what appears to be heaven's waiting
room. Her long dead father welcomes her, and she learns that she's
waiting to be "assessed". After an emotional conversation
with her father, Charlotte is offered the chance to move things
along by returning to earth as an angel, a guardian angel, to watch
over, of all people, James Kane. You can only imagine Charlotte's
thoughts!
Charlotte is not your
typical angel! No wings, no harp, no sweet guidance
in fact,
no sweet anything as far as James is concerned. Once she discovers
he can hear her, Charlotte goes about exacting her revenge
James
finds that karma has quite a nasty bite! She also decides to help
her sister Kate and best friend Fiona out while she's at it. Or
at least she's pretty sure she's helping. Charlotte's efforts at
sabotaging James' career, matchmaking for Fiona and helping Kate
nurture her marriage quickly become much more complicated than expected.
In fact, nothing seems to be going the way it should.
I just loved this book!
Underneath all of the laughs and dizzying plot twists lie some very
big truths. There's more substance, more heart than appears right
on the surface. So, welcome summer a little early by diving into
the pleasures of "paradise".
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