Review: 5* for Chic-Lit aficionados; 3* for others
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 01 16, 2012
FLIRTING  WITH DEATH, Assassins Anonymous, Step One. Kindle Edition by Heidi Hall is a chick-lit mystery story.Kayla McKenna awakens in an unrecognized room with intense pain to receive shocking news. The physician who restored her to life says she had suffered a bullet wound that had penetrated her left atrium and severed her pulmonary artery. She cannot remember what happened but knows she is the daughter of a man who had been killed by terrorists while she was still young and as a result grew up with a well-disguised underlying basic hatred. She recognizes that this basic pattern led her to become an assassin in the employ of the CIA. When sufficiently recovered to have visitors, her `back-up', David Westfall, informs her that the CIA has cut her loose, and she has nowhere to go but to make a return to a suburban way of life.From this point, the story progresses with a series of probable and improbable events that include Kayla's family of three overly protective police officer brothers, a doting mother who adores shopping sprees and a grandfather with Alzheimer symptoms.  There also is a handsome lawyer, who the mother discovers for Kayla, and the return of a love interest with a shady past, along with his man Friday, from the assassin days. David Westfall and Clair Hightower, the surgeon who saved her also reenter the picture and Mona, Clair's mother, is introduced. Mona runs a pot farm and both she and her daughter demonstrate some magical powers of healing as well as of intuitive perception.Mechanically, the author has provided a `fun' story that breezes along at a fine clip with intrigue, passion and suspense with the overlying chick-lit bent that aficionados of the genre will love.Now however, I hope readers of this review will understand and not be incensed with the following remarks. Briefly, when I acquired the book, it was in the belief that it would be another straight `mystery story'. It is not and I believe the prospective reader should be aware of this fact. It is, as I said, chick-lit. It is well written and most enjoyable for these readers, I am sure, For persons not enamored of the genre, unfortunately, large portions are a bit boring. Reviewed by John H. Manhold, award winning author of fiction/non-fiction.