Part of Rose Gardner Mystery
First published 2011
Rose Gardner endures another dreary Friday at the Arkansas DMV when a vision strikes her. She's always had visions, mostly mundane glimpses of overflowing toilets and minor mishaps. This time she sees herself dead. When Rose arrives home, she discovers her controlling mother murdered on the living room sofa. The blood stain will never come out, and the police consider Rose their main suspect. Faced with her own mortality, Rose scribbles twenty-eight goals on a Walmart receipt, determined to finally live before her vision becomes reality. Her mysterious neighbor Joe helps her learn to drink and break rules, but refuses to assist with goal fifteen: intimate experience with a man. Joe clearly hides secrets of his own. Someone believes Rose possesses something valuable and will kill to obtain it. Her house gets ransacked, another acquaintance turns up murdered, and Rose realizes dying as a virgin in Fenton County jail might be the least of her problems.
Genres: romance, mystery, contemporary, adult, adult-fiction, thriller
Vibes: darkly-humorous, emotional, fast-paced, gritty, suspenseful
Tropes: bucket-list-goals, forced-proximity, mysterious-neighbor, slow-burn-romance
Setting: Arkansas, Fenton County, DMV, Walmart
Period: Contemporary
326 pages · Paperback · CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Content warnings: death, murder