BLEEDING VIOLET by Dia Reeves

Hanna, half black and half Finnish arrives on her mothers doorstep with a few peculiarities. She talks to her dead Poppa and has hit her Aunt Ulla over the head with a rolling pen. Turns out she's manic depressive with bouts of hallucinations. But when she arrives in Portero, Texas, she's no the strangest thing around anymore. Turns out the sect of people called the Mortmaines, who protect the weak from monsters and spirits that would like to do them harm.

Hannah's mother, Rosalee, isn't happy to see her. Seems she immune to the mother daughter bond. Rosalee tells's Hanna that if she can't make friends or fit in in two weeks, she must leave and go back to her Aunt. Her Aunt who uses every opportunity to have Hanna committed.

This book was all over the place to me. I just couldn't find a place in the storyline that was interesting to me. Rosalee was crazy and so was Hannah.

LUST, LOATHING AND A LITTLE LIP GLOSS by Kyra Davis

I loved Kyra's first Sophie Katz Mystery (SEX, MURDER AND A DOUBLE LATTE), and this one didn't disappoint. Kyra has an amazing way of having her character say exactly what we'd all like to say to friends, enemies, and others, but she does it in a way that seriously fun and entertaining. I love her quirky yet extremely loyal friends, Marcus and Dena. But Dena was as prevalent in this book. Marcus was hysterical as the protective sidekick ready to do battle with a hair-spray can.

Sophie seems to have a talent for finding dead bodies or people who want to kill her. In this installment she finds both. Due to some family history, she's not even aware of, her ex-husband pulls her into a group a people who believe in ghosts, all to get the house of her dreams. When the house's owner is found dead by Sophie and her ex-husband, Shopie decides she will do anything the new owner, Kane Crammer, asks in order to keep the house. That includes becoming a lifetime member of the Specter Society. When a member is found dead again, by Shopie, her strapping Russian P.I. boyfriend Anatoly and the dead mans' soon to be ex-wife Maria, Sophie is relieved to find out she's not a suspect this time. But Kane seems to be more and more obsessed with Sophie and she's determined to find out why, against the wishes of Anatoly, who's also very jealous of Sophie's ex-husband being back in the picture.

Everyone tries to talk Sophie into giving up the house, but she knows if she can just get to the bottom of the deaths and Kane's fascination with her, she can live peacefully, and probably with Anatoly, in the house of her dreams at a bargain basement price.

There's a goth teen, a slimy ex-husband with a threatening new girlfriend, obsessions with ghosts and a disturbing family history. All the things that make a funny mystery adventure.

I thought this book was so cute. I laughed out loud many times.