Pushin Up Daisies by Carolyn Brown

First off I always wonder why Carolyn Brown's books have so few reviews. She's a great author! My guess is that the book covers leave a lot to be desired; you really can't tell what the book is going to be about by looking at them. Such a shame! I don't know if she's classified as "Inspirational", I don't think so but I might be wrong. And people, that is really the best compliment. Cos when I look at Inspirational books I'm looking for a good clean read,I'm not looking to be preached at. Carolyn Brown delivers.

Anyway, Here's what I enjoyed about this book: Carolyn makes me laugh out loud with her full-of-life heroines . You never know what is going to happen next but you're going to enjoy it whatever it is!

 f you read her other trilogy (Angels and Outlaws) you'll see several similarities with this Black Swan trilogy. In both sets there are three sisters making it on their own. In her previous trilogy they all had black hair and blue eyes, the oldest was tallest and they went down in height as they did with age. A little cliche but that was the way it went. In this trilogy the three sisters had red hair and green eyes. Again, the oldest was tallest and most "sensible" etc etc.

Frankly, in both trilogies I found that the oldest sister's story was the least interesting (though I still enjoyed it) and here's why. It's very simple. The tallest, prettiest, most sensible sister gets the tallest, most sensible and handsome man. I'm sorry but that just doesn't do it for me. I want real life. Real people. Give that handsome man a flaw and I'll like him 100 times more. Same with the heroine. Make her someone we can relate to.

Back to the story! One of the sister has a rotten husband that goes missing. The O'Shea sister's are suspect (as they should be). A handsome detective comes to solve the mystery and stays in the O'Shea's hotel while he susses out their story. Sparks fly , there's some twists and turns and the detective falls in love with one of the sisters.

Now, this is where the author loses me a little, about two thirds of the way through the book, the detective asks Catherine to join him at a beach house he owns in Florida. I'm like "Whaaat?" Ok, no hanky panky goes on but I'm thinking, "This is 1919, how many self respecting women would do that and take the chance of ruining their reputation". It just seemed very unlikely. So I was puzzled and that distracted me from the story.

Also, apart from the physical attraction between Catherine and Quincy I could see no reason why they loved each other. So as a reader I wasn't rooting for them as much as I would if their relationship was a little more deeply based.


I would give this story 4 stars because even though I had several criticisms I still enjoyed the book enough to buy the next two stories in the trilogy. And while this is not a review of the second in series "From thin Air" I'll just say that I am enjoying the second one even more as it focuses on Alice (the so called "dim witted" one) and I like her best. But I won't spoil it for you, you just need to get the whole series and read them all.