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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Feb 2021, 256 pages
Paperback:
Jul 2021, 256 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Ian Muehlenhaus
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In the first of a new mystery series, we meet Nora Best as she flees her old life, cheating husband and all, and takes to the road with an Airstream trailer.
Nora Best is the envy of her friends. She's just turned fifty and has traded in her home with The Perfect-Ass Husband for an Airstream trailer and an adventure of a lifetime across the US.
But during their leaving party, Nora finds her husband in a compromising position with a friend. Storming out of the party she jumps into her truck with no idea how to tow the Airstream or where she's going.
Nora ends up in a campground in the mountains of Wyoming, drowning her sorrows with its managers, Brad and Miranda. When she is woken by a frantic Miranda after Brad has disappeared and bloodstains have been found around the campsite, Nora finds herself caught up in an adventure she could never have expected...facing a charge of murder.
Excerpt
BEST LAID PLANS
Later – many, many years later – Nora would make a joke of it. You want to go from drunk to sober in two seconds flat? Get a gander of your husband helping himself to his best friend's wife.
And maybe she was sober as she made her way across the lawn, phone clenched in hand, toward the laptop powering the photo montage. Soberer still as she clicked at the phone and then the computer, a quick download, a few more clicks to stop the running carousel, to freeze a single photo on the screen. She reached for the extension cord running from the house, found the plug to the lights. Yanked it.
The lawn plunged into darkness, alpenglow long gone, the only light supplied by the screen with its image of Joe fucking Charlotte.
Nora's voice shattered the silence more thoroughly than any fling of crystal against patio brick.
'Party's over.'
She bolted back through the house, scooping up her keys and purse, past Joe and Charlotte emerging from the bathroom.
'...
Overall, Best Laid Plans is a bit of a tease. It seduces with a quick-moving plot, a few charming characters, and just enough tension to not be a bore. Like all teases, though, it also leaves you hanging for more. That said, Florio is a great writer. Her descriptions of nature and food were vivid and engaging. If you're looking for some fun, easy reading by a gifted writer, I definitely recommend this one. If you prefer suspenseful thrillers or complex plotlines, you may want to look elsewhere...continued
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(Reviewed by Ian Muehlenhaus).
Bears terrify a lot of people. So much so that "arkoudaphobia" — the fear of bears — is a common phenomenon.
However, the danger bears pose to people in North America is massively embellished in the public's collective psyche. Fantastical representations of bears in literature, television and film have exacerbated arkoudaphobia. The Oscar-winning film The Revenant is one example of bear mauling dramatization. The 1989 book We're Going on a Bear Hunt is an example of early fear-building among children.
In actuality, given how little wild habitat bears have left and the penchant humans have to hike through the bear territory that remains, attacks are very rare. To be so unfortunate as to die by mauling — at least in ...
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