A Bad Day for Sunshine (Sunshine Vicram, Book 1)

DARYNDA JONES

Stats for my copy: Kindle edition, St. Martin's Press, expected publication date 4/7/20.

How acquired: NetGalley.

(For the Goodreads synopsis, scroll to the bottom of this post.) 

My thoughts:  While I hadn't read Ms. Jones before, I am very aware of her popular Charley Davidson series, and even have books one and twelve of that series in my TBR. So when an email showed up from Netgalley about this book, the first in a new series, being available, I jumped on it.

It's one of those books that is filled with quirky characters and outlandish situations. Starting with Sunshine becoming the sheriff of her home town after winning an election that she had not even entered. Her friend and coworker, Quincy, tells her she killed it at a the debate. How...? Sunshine never does find out how her parents managed to get her elected behind her back, but she is still glad of the opportunity to move back to her home town, if only to investigate her own abduction when she was seventeen, of which she has very little memory, and the perpetrator was never caught.

Much of the dialogue was quite amusing, with quips being tossed back and forth between the characters like a volleyball, while Sunshine and her deputies race against the clock to find a missing teenager who had premonitions of her own abduction and murder for years. I sometimes got a little confused as something would come up from Sun's past. For instance, one minute her childhood rival and bully Hailey is snarling insults at her, and the next they're hugging in a coffee shop storeroom, followed by a short info dump to explain their situation, although I'm still not completely clear on why the two women have to pretend to hate each other when anyone else is around. Plus there was just soooo much going on, like dozens of tiny little side plots. Despite that, I like the author's writing and the story was engaging for the most part. And when Sunshine and her daughter finally had a heart to heart, no more secrets, talk about what happened to Sunshine when she was seventeen, I cried right along with them.

While Sunshine is apparently surrounded by handsome burly men, Levi of course stood out from the others. An enigma, who I'm sure we'll learn more about as the series progresses. I have some theories about him, and I loved the conversation between them when she went to his house to thank him for something and ended up standing beside his bed interrupting his nap to talk to him.

If this review comes across as my feeling a bit ambivalent about the book, I guess I am a little, but the bottom line is I did get quite caught up and raced through the last quarter or so, and I look forward to the next book. And definitely need to get a start on the Charley Davidson books.

Goodreads synopsis: Del Sol, New Mexico is known for three things: its fry-an-egg-on-the-cement summers, its strong cups of coffee—and a nationwide manhunt? Del Sol native Sunshine Vicram has returned to town as the elected sheriff—an election her adorably meddlesome parents entered her in—and she expects her biggest crime wave to involve an elderly flasher named Doug. But a teenage girl is missing, a kidnapper is on the loose, and all of it's reminding Sunny why she left Del Sol in the first place. Add to that trouble at her daughter’s new school and a kidnapped prized rooster named Puff Daddy, and Sunshine has her hands full.

Enter sexy almost-old-flame Levi Ravinder and a hunky US Marshall, both elevens on a scale of one to blazing inferno, and the normally savvy sheriff is quickly in over her head. Now it’s up to Sunshine to juggle a few good hunky men, a not-so-nice kidnapping miscreant, and Doug the ever-pesky flasher. And they said coming home would be drama-free.