This is the second in a series which can often be less well done than the first. To me it was a good mystery with some interesting characters and some growth in the behavior of the sisters Lexie and Lucy. Lexie was getting less "bad girl" attitude and Lucy was still preachy but not as overbearing with it.

So, what was the problem? It was a single word, the word "hiccough". The spelling bothered me a bit but I could have lived with that except for the fact that it must be used about 200 times in this book! Almost every conversation that Lexie has with anyone other than Sister Lucy, her daughter Eva or brother-in-law and cop Otis. The Hiccough is a reflex reaction to tension and I wouldn't mind it being mentioned when she was feeling tense but not only did see mention that the hiccoughs were starting but she inserted the word into every single sentence, or even two or three in between two words of the sentence. It got to the point that I was almost disgusted enough to stop reading the book because of one stupid word. Not only did it pull me out of the story but I was talking *out loud* to the author to "for got sakes get over the stupid hiccoughs and let the character speak a whole sentence." Aaargh!

So, I'm going to have to think long and hard about whether I'll read any more in the series, which is a shame because there is a lot of like about the books.

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