The initial description I saw of The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store is that it is a murder mystery - a genre that done well has me speed-reading to get to the solution - but in this case, the characters, their lives, and their relationships to each other were so rich and drew me in so much, I forgot that I was waiting to identify a body (though the payoff was worthy of a Coen brothers film). 

If you can read this without hearing the voices of their television counterparts, I can only assume you’ve never seen the Golden Girls.

I was excited to read a mystery set in the Appalachians, but I was a little disappointed with this one because the place and people didn’t seem distinctly Appalachian.

The Lamplighter is a YA novel which tend to be hit or miss for me, and this one has some of the pitfalls that make it a miss, such as overwrought, almost melodramatic language, but inconsistently so which makes it feel unintentional and unnecessary. However, there was a lot I liked about it.