EARTHLY PLEASURES by Karen Neches
Karin Gillespie is one of my favorite people. She is bright, personable and funny which is probably the reason the books she writes are bright, personable and funny. She is the author of a series of books about the "Bottom Dollar Girls" and if you haven't read them you should. They are funny stories mixed with heart.
In her new book Karin went for a little heavier subject matter and for that reason she authored it under the pen name of Karen Neches. This book is titled EARTHLY PLEASURES and it deals with Heaven and Earth, and the relationship between the two. The story starts in Heaven but ends up on Earth.
When it starts in Heaven we meet a greeter named Skye. Her assignment requires that she meet some of the newly dead people coming to Heaven. She helps them transition. One of the people she helps transition is a young girl named Delilah while another is a man named Ryan. Delilah is there for the duration while Ryan is not quite dead and returns to Earth.
This early part of the book almost did me in. Heaven and angels is not my idea of a great setting or characters for a book. Many times I thought I would just set this one aside and let it be. But something urged me to keep reading, and I did. Eventually the author's sense of humor and sense of story won me over.
In time the relationships of all the key characters become evident, and the love story that has been lurking in the background moves to the forefront. Skye has a relationship to Ryan and is meant to find out what it is. When this is uncovered the book really takes off.
This is not my favorite Karin Gillespie, AKA Karen Neches, book. Slogging through the pages spent in Heaven and learning God is a woman who looks like Bette Midler just wasn't my idea of a good time. I can appreciate the cleverness but it still didn't strike my funnybone the way other items in Karen's hilarity chest have.
Still I can recommend it for those looking for a sweetly sentimental love story, and add that it has humorous aspects that are clever as can be. Karen Neches doesn't try to be as funny as Karin Gillespie. Her aim is for the heart more than humor and on that point she succeeds. I preferred the earth-bound portion of the story and when it all got centered there I was a happier reader.
EARTHLY PLEASURES is published by Simon and Schuster. It contains 304 pages and sells for $14.00.