A Bad Day for Sunshine by Darynda Jones(Sunshine Vicram #1)
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
April 7, 2020
St Martin’s Press
NetGalley, Fiction, arc, book series, digital
352 pages
ISBN: 9781250149442
4/9/20-4/15/20
After 15 years, Sunshine Vicram returns to her hometown of Del Sol, New Mexico which people refer to as the Psych Ward. Of course, Vicram is more surprised than the town Mayor Donna Lomas to discover she had won the election for town sheriff since she hadn’t run for the position. Her parents are delighted and seem to have rigged the election in her favor. Sun has always had a contentious relationship with her parents who pay no regard to letter of the law.
Mayor Lomas is tolerating Sunshine as the sheriff and primarily focused on discovering the identities of the infamous Dangerous Daughters. This is a group of women who have secretly “run” the town since it went bankrupt. Del Sol went from a mining town to a hippie commune in 1930. The positive aspect of moving home for Sun was being able to work with her childhood best friend, Quincy, who works for the Del Sol police department. Her parents, Cyrus and Elaine Freyr, had living quarters built for Sunshine and her 14 yo daughter Aurora on their property.
Only Quincy is aware of Sun’s additional intention for moving back which is to follow up on a traumatic event which led to her moving away to Albuquerque and then Santa Fe when she was 17 years old. Her past experiences helped shape her into a strong, feisty and sarcastic woman capable of running a police department. Her daughter, Aurora “Auri” is a capable, independent teen who has the same investigative instincts as her mother.
It seems the past and present collide for Sunshine when she sees Levi Ravinder with whom she had a crush on back in school. The family name was synonymous with crime and illegal business practices. Sun is pleased to learn that Levi has been legitimizing the family moonshine business into a thriving company, Dark River Shine.
Auri is having a difficult time adjusting to her new school and desperately tries to keep her troubles to herself. She admires her hard working single mother and never wants to be a burden on her. She makes an unlikely friend with Cruz De los Santos who appears to be an angry poetic kid. She admires his confidence and independence.
On Sunshine’s first day at the station, Ruby Moore sent muffins to police station, which always alarms the officers. They claim that strange things happen in their small town whenever she sends muffins. Much to Sun’s chagrin at superstitious gossip, her first day becomes more eventful than she ever imagined. This is a witty and often humorous mystery novel.
The novel unfolds a messy and confusing case involving a missing classmate of Auri. There are many moving pieces and accusations being thrown around. It’s up to Sunshine to weed through the lies and truths before times runs out in finding this missing girl.
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