Wednesday, June 27, 2018

You Had Me at Halo

By Amanda Ashby

Holly Evans has just died. Which is a real shame because she was just getting started with her life. She had a great job, a handsome and successful boyfriend and the good fortune to have her best friend as a coworker.
But now it is all over and, to make it even worse, everyone thinks she committed suicide. But she as she adamantly tells her heavenly "spiritual realigner," Dr. Hill, she most certainly did not commit suicide and she is really angry that all her friends, family and coworkers think she did! And this is preventing her from transitioning from entry-level heaven to real heaven and her longed-for reunion with her parents, already residents of heaven.
But her baggage is keeping her from advancing and so Dr. Hill gives her 48 hours to return to life and deal with her problems. The catch is that she will have to inhabit the body of a very recently dead person and she ends up in the body of Vince Murphy, a nerdy techie coworker.
Although no one at work knew it, young Vince had a heart condition and he suddenly passed on, enabling Holly to move in and take over his life for 48 hours. She is desperate to contact her boyfriend and assure him that she did not, in fact, kill herself. That she loves him very much and was looking forward to becoming engaged and getting married.
But how can she approach her boyfriend wearing the surprisingly well-built body of a geeky young computer tech? Even worse, turns out Vince didn't actually die and he is quite perturbed to find out Holly has taken over his body!

This was a silly story and I quite enjoyed it. It was a fast, fun and amusing read although I did find the ending a bit weak.
It is another entry in the long line of romance fiction where the girl starts out blindly in love with a scoundrel and totally ignoring the good guy right under her nose. Of course the boyfriend turns out to be a selfish creep and the evil step-mother turns out to have a heart of gold and the wonderful job turns out to be an illusion. So Holly is not the most perceptive of girls and much of what she thought to be true turns out not to be. Pretty typical of this genre.
What is different about this story is how the author sets Holly up with her new love, Vince. Since Holly is actually dead and her 48 hours will soon be up and she will be called back to heaven to face her final evaluation, it seems hopeless that she and Vince can ever have the life they are meant to have together. How the author chooses to solve this dilemma was not very satisfactory.
But other than that, I truly did enjoy this light and fluffy story.

Review from Publishers Weekly.

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