#49: The Housewife Assassin's Handbook

Brown, Josie: The Housewife Assassin's Handbook. Signal Press Books, 2011. Ebook.

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SETTING: Hilldale, a community in Orange County, California.

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SUMMARY: Donna Stone is not only a trained assassin working for Acme Corporation, a black ops organization, but also a widow and the mother of three young children.  Her initial inspiration for joining the organization was to find the individual responsible for her husband's death, her husband who was also an assassin for Acme.  Little does she know that nothing is as it seems...

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FAVORITE QUOTE: "It's then that I realize that I know nothing about him.  Sure, he is a legend on the spook loops.  But we are all more than the sum parts of our missions." - Chapter 9.

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HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

This is not the type of book I'll ever have on my "to read" list.  Ever.  But it is the type of book I will read when there's nothing else at hand and I DESPERATELY need something to read, for example to make the time pass on my flight home this winter break.  This book is free via iBooks, is a mystery novel, and seemed light hearted, so I figured I'd give it a go.  

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Things I liked about this book:

1. Donna Stone's awareness of her flaws.  The main character of the book does it all, but she is also very aware of her weaknesses.  I appreciate that the author of the book didn't create a perfect character, but rather someone who was "relatable."

Thing I didn't like about this book:

1. Poorly written.  There is very little complexity in this book.  It is an easy read, I'll give it that, but it's easy because it's written at a 5th grade reading level.  That would be perfectly acceptable, except for the fact that this a book written for adults.  To further clarify: I would say that The Hunger Games books were written at this level, and although I didn't enjoy that aspect of the books, I did acknowledge that the target audience was young adults.  This series is written for adults, and I would have liked the book much more if it read as such.
2. Poor character development.  The writer provides you with bits and pieces of each character in a haphazard fashion and expects that to count as satisfactory character development.  It is absolutely not.  Her characters are idiotic the majority of the time and often lack a clear train of thought.  If such assassins existed in real life, we would be in a great deal of trouble.
3. Predictable.  All the "twists" in the novel were easily predicted chapters before they actually took place.  The mystery aspect of this book can hardly be called that.

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This book was not very good, but since it made four hours of the journey home go by much quicker than it otherwise would have, it gets some points.  I almost started the second book in the series, but luckily the rest of the flight home was occupied by sleep.  But who knows, unless I'm a little more proactive and find a better book to read, the second in this series may be on the menu for my flight back at the end of winter break.  My brain is craving something that requires more thought though, so I'm going to put the effort in to finding an appropriate book.

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Recommend?  Nope.  Too many other books out there that are a better use of your time.  Unless of course you're looking for a "beach" read (i.e. something that requires you to use 0.5% of your brain...).