*Review* A Bad Day for Sunshine by Darynda Jones

 

Genre: Police Procedural

Published: April 7, 202

Pages: 397

Sheriff Sunshine Vicram finds her cup o’ joe more than half full when the small village of Del Sol, New Mexico, becomes the center of national attention for a kidnapper on the loose.

Del Sol, New Mexico is known for three things: its fry-an-egg-on-the-cement summers, strong cups of coffee—and, now, a nationwide manhunt? Del Sol native Sunshine Vicram has returned to town as the elected sheriff—thanks to her adorably meddlesome parents who nominated her—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 this is reminding Sunshine why she left Del Sol in the first place. Add to that the trouble at her daughter’s new school, plus and a kidnapped prized rooster named Puff Daddy, and, well, the forecast looks anything but sunny.

But even clouds have their silver linings. This one's got Levi, Sunshine's sexy, almost-old-flame, and a fiery-hot US Marshal. With temperatures rising everywhere she turns, Del Sol's normally cool-minded sheriff is finding herself knee-deep in drama and danger. Can Sunshine face the call of duty—and find the kidnapper who's terrorizing her beloved hometown—without falling head over high heels in love...or worse?

I listened to the audiobook version of this story for a book club meeting. This story is told from a couple different perspectives, at at least with the audio, it usually wasn't super clear initially when there was a change in character perspective leading to some serious confusion. 

Some of the major highlights of this story were the banter between Sunshine and literally everyone else, the relationship between Sunshine and Ari, her daughter (which felt very Gilmore Girl-esque, although Sunshine comes across more as cool mom than the best friend that Lorelai is), and the police blotters and business signs. Those were hilarious. This book was just really chock full of witty shit that had me cracking up. 

While there was one main investigation for this story, there were several mysteries that Sunshine and her team were working on, which makes sense because what police force only has one case at a time. Some of those issues were resolved over the course of this story, others remained as loose threads, so if you need complete resolution, you should definitely plan on reading the whole series back to back. 

Overall I give A Bad Day for Sunshine 4.1732 out of 5 stars. - Katie 

Amazon

NYTimes and USA Today Bestselling Author Darynda Jones has won numerous awards for her work, including a prestigious RITA, a Golden Heart, and a Daphne du Maurier, and her books have been translated into 17 languages. As a born storyteller, Darynda grew up spinning tales of dashing damsels and heroes in distress for any unfortunate soul who happened by, certain they went away the better for it. She penned the international bestselling Charley Davidson series and is currently working on several beloved projects, most notably the Sunshine Vicram Mystery Series with St. Martin's Press and the Betwixt and Between Series of paranormal women's fiction. She lives in the Land of Enchantment, also known as New Mexico, with her husband and two beautiful sons, the Mighty, Mighty Jones Boys.

Click here to read one of the more popular short stories by Darynda called The Monster:

https://theneverneath.com/2018/02/02/the-monster-part-1/

She can be found at http://www.daryndajones.com