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Genre: mystery
Pages: 220
Published: April 2011
Source: for review
Review by Lis
Cindy and Clint are enjoying their dream honeymoon, when paradise quickly turns into hell. Cindy finds her newly beloved taken away from her, drowned in a freak accident in the ocean. The local police are quick to declare it an accident, to insist that he was caught in a sudden riptide. But Cindy, left all alone, is not convinced. Cindy must return to her and Clint’s now-empty home in New York and face her in-laws, who never wanted Clint to marry her, and who did everything to make her engagement and wedding hell.
Cindy is mailed an anonymous photo of a woman she had never met, addressed to Clint. As she tries to unravel the mysterious package, as she begins to dig deeper into Clint’s emails and files, she realizes how many secrets Clint had been hiding from his past. She realizes that she didn’t really know the man she loved. And she also realizes that Clint was murdered. She digs deeper, into the depths of Clint’s massive corporation, DGB oil, and as she starts to unearth information she shouldn’t, she goes too far. Soon her own life is in peril. On the run, she realizes that the only way to get answers, and to save her own life, is to return to where it all began: Barbados. As she heads into the dark underside of the island, into the heart of the local villages, she is shocked to discover what really happened to her husband on their honeymoon.
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When I first received the request for a review, I have to admit that I didn’t find the title very original. It not only reveals a hell of a lot about the book it’s also one of the many pun-titles you see around. However, I was intrigued by the blurb. There are not many stories that begin with the death of a husband on the newlyweds’ honeymoon. So of I went.
The story was good, nothing spectacular, but not bad either. It’s the story of Cindy. After a lot of struggles with her in-laws she finally got to marry her love Clint only to lose him on their honeymoon, when he dies in a supposedly freak accident. This is also where the story starts. You get thrown right into it. No leading up to the big event for this author! The focus of the story is what happens after. Clint’s parents are not the easiest to get along with. Opposed to the marriage from the beginning they’re downright hostile to Cindy.
From the beginning Cindy suspects foul play, but it isn’t until later in the story that she really starts to delve into Clint’s live and death. Something foul is going on and Cindy is right in the middle of it. The question for Cindy is: does she want to know the truth?
Like I said, this story was good. Nothing original, but not bad either. Cindy is not my kind of gal. She’s too easy for me. She lets her life be dictated by her overly bossy sister and hardly (in my eyes) stands up to her in-laws. Of course, she’s suffered a great loss and it’s not easy having to deal with everything.
The characters are standard and the setting is so-so. Though it was nice to see something different than America for a change! However, keep in mind that Death by Honeymoon is a relative short story and doesn’t leave too much page-space to really delve into things. As a result this is why the story fell a bit short for me. The mystery hardly got going before the end is there. It’s too cut out for me. That doesn’t mean this story is not for you as it might just be what gets you through a lazy Sunday afternoon!
