Book Review: Red Mojo Mama

Image from goodreads.com

Title:  Red Mojo Mama
Author:  Kathy Lynn Hall
Pages: 332
Publication Date:  2011
Version:  I read the E-Book Version (Free from Amazon.com!)
Genre:  Adult Fiction

Summary Via Goodreads.com:
"After three years of mourning for her husband, normally audacious Lydia “Red” Talbot has lost her mojo, but it seems that’s about to change. She’s inherited a valuable mobile home park in the Gold Country of California, filled with a cast of eccentric characters, which she intends to sell and use the proceeds to take a world cruise. A hot handyman, a sizzling story in the rapidly growing town of Nuggetville and the appearance of her husband’s ghost (who has decided to hang around awhile as he searches for his next life), all put a kink in her plans. While Lydia waits for her fortune to materialize, she takes a part-time job as a reporter. Fancying herself the community newspaper equivalent of Christiane Amanpour, Lydia uncovers some shady doings by the City Council and a slick land developer. Citizens are bullied and her life is threatened, as she struggles to both expose the crooks and stay emotionally independent of the community of crazies she has been left by her beloved Aunt Esther. Lydia is a spunky, smart-alecky thirty-something with more heart than she’d like others to see. She’s absolutely fearless and too honest for her own good sometimes. She’s also torn between love for her dead husband, Mac, and the new man in her life, Joe - handyman and chef."


My Review:
All I can say at first after reading this book is…WOW!!  This book had a little of everything to satisfy ANY reader in my opinion.  It had action, romance, great plot, great and very likable characters, and content that made you really think about some things in your own life.  When I finished this book I found myself just sitting and thinking about a wonderful quote used more than once in this book…“everything comes full circle…eventually”.  I loved ALL the characters from The Springs trailer park community.  All were made out to be such realistic characters that it made me feel like I was really living the book!  The more I read, the more “into” the book I seemed to become.  I truly felt like I was in the book and really experiencing the whole thing from inside.  I found myself looking up from the book actually feeling surprised that I was in my own living room and not in whatever setting I had just read about.  I must say, not many books can do that for me, but this one sure did.  I found myself laughing out loud, smiling, worrying, feeling angry, and even tearing up while I read this book.

Red (Lydia) had inherited a trailer park and trailer home from a very close aunt who has died.  Her first thought was to just go and live there until she could get it sold and then go to live out her dreams of going a world cruise with the money it would sell for.  Red has had a great loss of, not only her aunt dying, but three years earlier her husband dying.  She misses him a lot, but once she is moved into her aunts home she is surprised to learn that Mac (Red’s late husband) is there, as a ghost to help her through this move and much more.  The people living in the trailer park that Red inherits are truly amazing and are simply works of art.  Red soon discovers that she wants a job (other than running the park), not because she needs money (as her aunt left her a wonderful nest egg), but because she wants something to do that makes her feel productive.  She soon gets a job as a reporter for a small town’s newspaper that is printed once a week.  From this job she learns many things about the town and about her aunt.  Nothing seems to be what it looks like on the surface.  This “perfect” little town has some “perfectly juicy” little secrets that are not meant to be found out, by her OR the townspeople.  All through this book Red learns to trust, love, and protect the new people she has come to live with in her trailer park.  Questions are…can she do what is right by the townspeople and still be liked by them?  And can she ever truly move on from her dead husband to pursue a new relationship again?  And what exactly IS this big secret the town chair people have kept from the townspeople?

Well, to answer those questions and find out a LOT more about Red and the circumstances surrounding her new life and find out more about the wonderful characters that steal away your heart you MUST read this book!  5 out of 5 stars FOR SURE!!!!

This book will count towards my following challenges:  100 Book Challenge, 1,000,000 Pages Read Challenge, A to Z Title Challenge, Color Coded Challenge, Rainbow Reading Challenge, and Why Buy the Cow? Reading Challenge.