Darynda Jones | Fiction, 2020

390 pages

Sunshine Vicram was elected sheriff of her hometown, Del Sol, New Mexico.  Which is pretty interesting, considering she wasn’t even a candidate, nor living there.  So she and her daughter move from Santa Fe to the “guesthouse” her parents built for her behind their home in Del Sol, and both embark upon reestablishing themselves in a town that has buckets full of memories, some very painful.

We follow Sunshine as she searches for a missing girl, a missing boy, and, in the background, for the identity of the man who abducted her when she was 17.  Okay, sounds morbid, eh?  But it is not. This is a fun detective novel, reminiscent of Nevada Barr.  Sunshine’s 14-year-old daughter Auri is a delightful, smart, major character, as in Sunshine’s BFF, Quincy.  And the connections between and among the people of Del Sol are intriguing, reminding me of the town of Three Pines (Louise Penny).

I found the book surprisingly slow to start, but it picks up. Hence the three hearts.  The last half is page-turning.

If Sunshine were a male main character, you would throw this book against the wall as offensive and misogynist.  You will find you need to decide if you can actually like a main character who ogles every good-looking man she sees, and keeps a running commentary in her mind about his face, chest, muscles, ass.  I enjoyed her hormone-driven fantasies, but don’t tell my friends.  My feminism may come into question(!)