Review: Gone with a Handsomer Man by Michael Lee West

Teeny Templeton catches her fiance, Bing, butt naked playing badminton with 2 beautiful yet skanky women. Her reaction is to climb a tree and throw peaches at the lot of them. Bing presses charges against her and gets a restraining order, he says to avoid a repeat of the assault. Now someone has texted Teeny in Bing's name and summoned her to their former home with the  lure of mending their relationship. The reality is different though. Teeny finds Bing dead just before someone knocks her cold. Who texted her? And who knocked her out? And who is framing Teeny for murder?

Add onto Teeny's troubles that she needs bail, a place to live, and a job. And she needs the help of her first love who is now a lawyer. But just who all can Teeny trust as she navigates the legal system and life in Charleston, SC?

It's a pretty good book. It reads some like chick lit and some like a mystery. It has its funny points(throwing peaches) and not so funny(funerals and restraining orders). Some of the characters are more developed than others which is to be expected since not all of them have a large role to play. The tempo of the book picks up the closer you get to the end. I liked that I couldn't tell who the murderer was going to be pretty much up until the end.

I had a couple of minor complaints. It's a little slow in places, but that's to be expected, for example, as we have a flashback to when Teeny and Coop were an item 10 yrs ago. And Teeny falls into bed kinda quickly with Coop after losing her fiance. Her relationship with Bing would have had to have been already rocky before he died, I would have thought, in order for her to go to bed with Coop that quickly. Michael Lee West uses Teeny's past relationship with Coop to help explain that.

Overall I give the book 4 out of 5 stars. It's  best for people who don't mind a little chick lit with their mysteries. As a bonus there are recipes at the end of the book for some of the Teeny's creations like Lavender Short Bread. I listened to the book on CD. The narrator reads with a pleasant southern accent. This audiobook was released in 2011 from Tantor Media.