Louisiana Longshot

*I'm changing the format of my book reviews to a shorter, more conversational style. Let me know what you think*

*Post includes affiliated links. Book purchased from Amazon.com*

I needed something to make me laugh.

After reading The Girl on The Train and The Girl Before (review coming in January.~Spoiler: IT WAS AWESOME!) I needed something light that wasn't going to haunt my dreams. I found Jana DeLeon's  Louisiana Longshot while scrolling through my TBR list on Kindle. (It's free for Kindle right now, just FYI).  I remembered I'd downloaded it because the reviews raved about her humor.

It was exactly what I needed.

Basically, it's a fish-out-of-water story.  A CIA assassin pisses off a powerful guy who puts a price on her head, so she hides out in a small town in Louisiana, pretending to be the beauty-queen niece of a local woman, who has recently passed away.

What I thoroughly enjoyed about this book was that it didn't portray the small town as a perfect place where everyone was all Norman Rockefellerish with shiny smiles and a flakey-crust apple pie to welcome the stranger. I

I've lived in small towns. They have their own special kind of crazy and this story nailed it, especially the after-church-race-to-the-restaurant.  

The Sinful Ladies Society (which isn't anything like you'd expect. It's not that kind of book. :) ) make the story. These are older women who reminded me so much of my grandma, who drove a Mustang and had three husbands before it was fashionable to have three husbands. She would've hung out with these ladies and laughed until she couldn't breathe.

This was a quick read. I finished it in a couple of hours on a morning when I had plenty of other stuff to do. It kept my attention right up until the end and made me laugh loud enough that my dogs came from the other room to check on me. 

It reads almost like a cozy. Very, very light on the romance but thick with smart dialogue.  It did have some on-screen violence at the end that surprised me.

 Oh, and a great twist that I kind of suspected but didn't fully work out until all the pieces fell into place.

This is the first in The Miss Fortune Series. I look forward to reading the rest when I need a brief escape and some good laughs. I definitely recommend this to any Janet Evanovich or Stephanie Bond fans.

So, this is my new format. Quick and to the point. What do you think? Is this enough for you? Is there something else you'd like to know in a review? I've got several lined up in the coming months. Let me know how I can make them useful for you.