"Bad Kitty" - Michele Jaffe

BLURB:

A weekend in Vegas with my family. How crazy-slash-shocking-slash-dangerous could it be?

Meet Jasmine [1], forensic supersleuth and unwitting victim of a naughty feline.

Her book is:
36% Las Vegas mystery
49% unstoppable crush [2]
15% fashion emergency
100% the cat’s fault [3]

[1] That’s me! Hi.
[2] Is that all you’re going to say about Jack? Aren’t you going to mention him? I mean, other than as a crush? If I were reading this, that’s what I could want to know about. I’m just saying.
[3] That’s it? The. End.? What about the wedding I ruined and Alyson and Veronique’s Crimes Against Fashion and…yes, I know. For the book. Inside. Zipping it.

(yes, those footnotes are intentional.)

REVIEW:

My friend gave me this book last Christmas. When I saw it, my first thought was "Huh, a Meg Cabot clone, but probably with inferior humour and a stupid plot." But it was a book. That someone had given me. Of course I was going to read it.

I soon found myself wondering why Michele Jaffe wasn't a lot more popular in the teen chick-lit scene, because I actually found myself giggling out loud more times than I could count. And let me tell you, I am not the kind to actually laugh out loud simply from reading a book, because my sense of humour is rather weird, and the only other author who has succeeded in this quest is Jaclyn Moriarty. Usually I just smile. This book was a crack-up and I'm looking forward to reading the next in the series.

I did have some qualms though. For instance, the plot. The book tries to be a 'mystery thriller', and the narrator, Jas, is an amateur detective who then goes about trying to solve this mystery. However, like so many police procedural TV shows, all the clues suddenly coalesce in the detective's mind during the last five minutes and are wrapped up so quickly you find yourself wondering "Hold on - who was that guy anyway?" In this case, the speech given by our detective in one of the final chapters - you know, the one where she recites all the clues and how the realisation about who the culprit was came to her in a sudden flash of inspiration at the last minute - winds up all the leads in a slightly tangled mess which was quite confusing.

Also, many of the situations and characters veered out of 'deliberately-bizarre-in-order-to-be-humourous' territory into the 'just-plain-ludicrous' category. This applies especially to the final climactic scene where all the lead characters are in big trouble - but of course they get out of it - where everything that occurs is entirely unrealistic and contrived.

But I forgive Michele for these flaws, and for spelling her name with only one 'L', because I understand they tend to be commonplace in this brand of fiction, and also because it was just plain fun to read.

RATING:

Very silly. Very funny. 4 STARS