Reading Hour

To start, my favorite of Shakespeare's plays is Hamlet.  It's so beautiful, and from page to page are quotations used even today.  After his father is murdered, Hamlet uses a play to call out his mother, insinuating that the Queen was waiting for the King's death so she could remarry.  When Hamlet asks his mother what she thinks of the play, she says, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

People who don't really know the play usually say, "Methinks the lady doth protest too much."  People who are ignorant about Shakespeare may think it comes from another play.  And people who are ignorant know-it-alls correct people about it coming from a different play.

Page 187, Peach Cobbler Murder:

 

"But Vanessa did say she hadn't spent the night with Mike."

"I know.  Several times.  Methinks the lady doth protest too much."

"That's Shakespeare,"  Andrea announced...

Andrea is correct.  As I've pointed out in previous reviews, Andrea is intelligent and observant, in spite of the author's laziness and her insistence in overusing trite, simple statements.  With Andrea, that tends to be, "I'm a real estate professional" to brush off any recognition of her talents.

"I know.  It's from MacBeth."

Hannah is incorrect.  She's correcting Andrea for not being precise enough, and she's incorrect in that correction.  There are only a couple of options here.  Either the author, everyone who read the book for the author before it got sent to the publisher, and her editor are completely incompetent...  (You know what?  If you Google Methinks the lady doth protest too much, the response is NOT MacBeth.) 

Or the author wanted to make a fool of Hannah.  And damn!  It's about freaking time that someone did that.  But in order for that to be effective, someone has to call her out.

"Do you really think Vanessa reads Shakespeare? Andrea asked, missing the point entirely. 

Really?  Missing the point?  God, Hannah is a b*tch.

 

"Not without moving her lips," Hannah said.

Yep, a stone cold one.

So, Lisa and her fiancé Herb get married, and Hannah not only provides the wedding cakes and a bunch of other items for the dessert bar, she drives the limo from the church to the reception.  Whatta gal.  Not bad for a person thinking that she's going to close down the business (and put Lisa out of a job) in a couple of weeks, because of the new competition from the Magnolia Bakery across the street.

After part of the competition is murdered, Hannah decides that she has to investigate (surprise!) because she's a suspect.  Most of the fracking town is a suspect because of the timing of the wedding and reception.  Really - Hannah got out of the church that was filled with wedding goers - got into the limo with the bride, groom and parents - drove to the Lake Eden Inn, and served wedding cake and other desserts.  HOW is she a suspect that happened between the time of the wedding and the reception?  HOW lazy is this author, that she has to make her characters THIS stupid?

This book, like Sugar Cookie right before, has fewer Hannah-lies than most of the previous books.  As in the opening of this review, Hannah the know it all continues to correct people - verbally and in her thoughts. 

Most of the book shows strongly that Norman is a fantastic, dependable person, and Mike is a creep. At the end of the book, someone tries to blow the Hannah-Mike-Norman triangle apart.