Review: Enjoyable in some ways, but
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 12 13, 2012
Readers will be taken with Bennett's breezy writing style, the witty repartee and the sexual innuendo. In other words, it's the perfect exemplar of the chick-lit murder mystery. Her protagonist Savannah's food and body issues (manifesting mainly as competitiveness with other women around appearance) are off-putting, however. If you live in the South, you know someone like that, and it is easy to tell yourself, "That's just the character."But it isn't. While there are good, bad, and ordinary slim people in the novel, every person who's above average size is stereotyped--lazy, greedy, hateful, scheming, covetous, boorish, tacky slobs. (Gay men don't come off too well in here, either.) So if you are a slender person who enjoys a little vicarious body-snarking with her cozies, this may be the book for you. If you are above-average size and do not wish to spend your hard-earned money and scant leisure time being insulted on nearly every page, it is not. And regardless of size, if you have an eating disorder, A Cutthroat Business is likely to be triggering.