About this book:
“Mid-Century Glam Meets Murder Mayhem
Get swept away to the glamor of a 1950’s department store where four women’s loyalties, vanity, friendship, and detective skills are put to the test.
Audrey Penault once led a glamorous life as a model but now works as devoted secretary to Mr. Wynton. To her fellow employees, she is too vain and uppity.
Mary Jo Johnson, a wife and mother, longs to find her worth in the cosmetics department, but it may take a while for the shy housewife to discover her voice.
Vivian Sheffield owns and runs the bridal salon within Wynton’s. She is proud of her accomplishments and won’t let anyone take them away.
Gigi Woodard dislikes her job as waitress in the store’s lunchroom, but she is determined not to let her secret shortcomings cause her to lose the position.
These four women have much to dislike about each other, but they unanimously agree that Mr. Wynton is the best of employers and must be protected at all costs from someone who seems determined to see him gone for good. When other employee deaths occur, can the women band together to solve the murders, or will they discover it is one of their own bent on destroying Wynton’s from within?”
Series: Book #1 in the “Women of Wynton’s Mystery” series.
Spiritual Content- A couple prayers (including a prayer at a funeral service asking God to hug the departed) & Thanking God; 'H's are capital when referring to God; Partially set around Christmas; Gigi notes she hasn’t been to church in years, but plans to pray for Mr. Wynton’s recovery; A main character says she hopes a man gets what is coming to him (for his actions) and another agrees and says “It’s hard to be Christian in circumstances like these”; Mentions of God & Him forgiving us for our mistakes; Mentions of prayers, praying, thanking God, & blessings over food; Mentions of churches, church going, & ministers; A few mentions of those in the Bible; A mention of Heaven; A mention of a nativity; A mention of a Christmas Eve service; A mention of being Blessed; A mention of needing a miracle; A mention of a couple being “staunch Baptists” and do not drink alcohol;
*Note: The phrase “speak of the devil” is cut-off; Other phrases like ‘for Pete’s sake’ and ‘my heavens’ are said once and twice; Mentions of lucky & being lucky; Mentions of Santa Claus & elves; A mention of Father Time; A mention of a woman having a “spell” over a man.
Negative Content- Minor cussing including: a ‘biddy’, a ‘blasted’, a ‘drat’, a ‘good golly’, a ‘good grief’, an ‘oh my word’, a ‘stupid’, two ‘dumb’s, two ‘oh my stars’s, and three ‘ever-loving’s; Mentions of curses (said, not written, including a man cursing at Audrey); Eye rolling; Being shot at, a Fire, & Being arrested (up to semi-detailed); Seeing murdered bodies & blood (barely-above-not-detailed); Going to a funeral service & seeing grief from the family; Gigi gets jealous of the other women for being pretty and getting promotions; Mary Jo tries to encourage her husband through his recovery when he makes negative comments about himself due to missing an arm (he picks a fight with her a couple of times, but she knows it’s because of their situation); Many mentions of murders, how they were done, the murderers, the bodies, blood/bleeding, & murder weapons (stabbing, being hit on the back of the head, & strangled; borderline barely-above-not-detailed // semi-detailed); Many mentions of crimes, criminals, thieves, thefts, stealing, stolen items, robberies, fraud, embezzling, jails, & arrests; Mentions of wars, deaths, battles, fighting, & men not returning the same; Mentions of car accidents, deaths, & injuries; Mentions of deaths & grief (including Vivian for her husband, another woman for her husband, a man for his son, & a boy for his mother); Mentions of deaths, wanting someone dead, attempted murders, poisons/poisoning, an allergic reaction (insect), & passing out; Mentions of Mary Jo’s husband who was in a construction accident and lost his right arm & his negative comments about himself that she hates hearing (including him being in dark moods, thinking he isn’t a man, and him not wanting to do anything); Mentions of a fire, being shot at, & a home being ransacked; Mentions of threats & blackmail; Mentions of injuries, pain, & a diagnosis of someone dying; Mentions of a (grown) son fighting with his father (verbally and physically throwing a chair at his father’s office door); Mentions of a married couple fighting, saying horrible things to each other, & not speaking for days after an intense situation; Mentions of gossip & rumors; Mentions of lies, lying, & liars; Mentions of jealousy; Mentions of divorces (including Gigi who has been divorced twice); Mentions of alcohol, drinking, drunks, & a bar; Mentions of cigars & smoking; A few mentions of a bomb & a couple dying due to their injuries; A few mentions of a woman with cancer being “near the end”; A few mentions of hatred; A couple mentions of a possible burglar & break-in; A couple mentions of military men having nightmares of their time serving (including one ordering amputations in his dreams out loud); A couple mentions of a woman husband hunting for husband number six (she has buried three and divorced two); A mention of the Great Depression;
*Note: Audrey recalling two car sales men asking if she needed to talk to her husband before buying a car and then asks how no man has “snatched [her] up” (which grated on her nerves; Audrey calls this “archaic”); A comment about a woman never driving in the city’s Christmas parade before; Others gossip & spread rumors about Audrey (all unflattering, including about her controlling Mr. Wynton, firing people at her whim, & her being a home wrecker); Gigi often compares herself to others & makes negative comments about not belong and on her appearance; Mary Jo often thinks about what her mother would say and compares her life to her mother’s (often implying it’s the gold standard for a housewife); Racial comments and observations are made based on the time-period (such as: A Black man comments on lots of things not being how they should be (which makes Audrey think about that while he served for his country, the same country won’t allow him to use restrooms or drinking from water fountains that say “Whites Only” and can’t even shop in the department store he worked for; Audrey agrees that lots of things need changing); Audrey asks him if he was treated badly during the war, but he clams up on the topic only saying it was no different than how he is treated currently; Gigi noting that one of the cooks she works with can’t join them in the cafeteria, but those complainers who would comment on it will still eat the food she makes; Audrey thinks about how living in Paris opened her eyes to relations between Blacks and Whites, how no one was treated less because of their skin color, & that Blacks want the freedoms that was “already extended to Whites and the foreigners they’d fought [in wars] for”; Audrey tries to get Mr. Wynton to be an example for their city about treating his “colored” employees better, but he says he is too old to go against the rules concerning Coloreds and Whites; Audrey wishes to stand with the Black employees at a funeral but knows it wasn’t done in her city without causing trouble for everyone involved; Gigi hears her boss tell a Colored co-worker that she can easily replace her; The department store has a policy about Black customers having a note from their White employers giving them permission to shop there in their stead (Audrey has tried to campaign against this policy; A Black maid is accused of stealing from her White employer because she’s missing the note); A Black woman who works in the cafeteria is not allowed to drink the sweet tea she makes because it’s poured from the same pitchers that the Whites used in the dining room; One woman talks about Sheriff McCall and his corruption with shooting the young men from Groveland and killing other Colored folks “for all kinds of shady reasons and using the law to make it right”, Harry and Harriette Moore who were bombed and not treated at a hospital due to their skin color, “the Klan” coming after someone, & the woman being upset at being treated like she and others like her are “not even good enough to be second-best”; A man calls a Black man an unflattering name (which is cut-off); A police officer says he can’t confirm something with only “the word of one Colored guard”; A few mentions of a “sundown town” that will haul Black people off to jail for being there as soon as the sun sets); Audrey attended business school at night with other females as the administration thought the women would be too distracting to attend class with men; Mary Jo wishes she could go back to being a housewife and mother rather than work (noting that she would trade all the “sophisticated freedom” to do that, but has to work because of her husband’s injury); A couple mentions of working mothers being told they are “scarring” their children by not being home with them; Mentions of brand names (Maxwell House coffee, Revlon, Max Factor, Maybelline, Elizabeth Arden, Chanel, Dior, Trifari, Timex, Balenciaga, Givenchy, Chanel No 5, Youth Dew perfume, White Shoulders perfume, Evening in Paris perfume, English Leather cologne, Wonder Bread, Coke, RC Cola, Moon Pie, Ivory, Vicks VapoRub, Tupperware, & Mary Janes); Mentions of celebrities, actresses, movies, TV shows, & songs (Grace Kelly, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando, James Dean, Bill Haley and His Comets, Queen Elizabeth, Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Cary Grant, Father of the Bride, East of Eden, Bride and Groom, & Lucy); Mentions of car brands; A few mentions of magazines (Modern Brides, Vogue, & Better Homes and Gardens); A mention of Halloween costumes; A mention of Macy’s; A mention of a book (Peter Pan).
Sexual Content- Two cheek kisses, an ear kiss, a nose kiss, a forehead kiss, an almost kiss, a not-detailed kiss, and three barely-above-not-detailed kisses (most are between a married couple); Some touches, embraces, flutters/shivers, & nearness (barely-above-not-detailed); Blushes; Mary Jo’s husband sees her changing and does a wolf whistle; When Gigi is dancing and kissing her boyfriend, she realizes that thanks to her “two ex-husbands’ worth of experience”, she knows this moment needs a “cooldown” (her boyfriend wiggles his eyebrows with a suggestive comment, but she tells him that he isn’t getting what he wants); A man comments that the store owner knows what he’s doing with Audrey as his secretary and Gigi accuses him of having a mind that lives in the gutter; A few others make suggestions that Audrey and Mr. Wynton were involved and he was her paramour; A woman makes a teasing comment that married men look “miserable”; A man stares at Audrey like she’s a dessert; A ‘baby’; Mentions of boyfriends, dating, dates, & being stood up; A few mentions of kisses & kissing; A few mentions of flirty grins, winks, & blushes; A couple mentions of jealousy; A couple mentions of a rumored/suggested affair (that did not actually happen); A couple mentions of a rumor about a woman dating a man twenty years her senior; A mention of a man being a better playboy than businessman; A mention of men just wanting a beautiful model to be their accessory; A mention of a wife mooning over his husband; A mention of a crush;
*Note: Gigi thinks of her figure as “straight and solid, lacking a waistline, with a few well-placed knots so folks knew she was a girl”; A man comments that his wife dislikes him working with young women & complains about him working with too many women at the department store; The same man refers to his wife as “the ball and chain”; Audrey thinks that a man wouldn’t recognize quality if it came and “bit him on his…chair cushion”.
-Audrey Penault
-Mary Jo Johnson
-Vivian Sheffield, age 50
-Gigi Woodard, age 35
P.O.V. switches between them
Set in 1955-1956
304 pages
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My personal Rating-
I’ve been meaning to read this one since it came out and now since the second book in the series will be releasing soon, it was time to finally read this book that is set at the end-of-the-year. It was neat that it covered fall through the New Year and all the excitement that came from the department store setting. I have learned this year that I like books set in department stores, there’s something about the wonder and class of them that interests me and this book covered that feeling well.
Before starting this book, I was a little leery about keeping track of the four main characters. Thankfully, that ended up not being as big as a concern as I was expecting because they were all very different characters with their own personalities and interests.
That said, Audrey didn’t deserve the hate she got from others. This book really highlighted how gossip and rumors are terrible and how you should never partake in them. Gigi and Cissy made my blood pressure rise every time they appeared. The catty women and people saying awful things about Audrey was partially what made me drop my rating from a 4 star. I was fully on her side and liked her professional, driven attitude. I can’t say I really liked any of the other women (Vivian, Mary Jo, and definitely not Gigi) and I thought they would be more helpful sooner on, but it was mainly Audrey trying to figure things out by herself for the majority of the book. I didn’t really see why she picked them to help (especially because two of them were suspicious of her already) and it felt a little forced to me.
The pacing and timeframe of this book was a little jumpy, which made things moved quickly and I had to keep up with the information shared. The ending felt a little rushed as well, but I think that was mainly because we’re told—rather than shown—a lot of the final results/solution to the mysteries (which I don’t really care for, but there was a lot of characters and details to keep up with so I suppose it made sense).
I almost added that Gigi is dating a bonafide loser to my content notes above, but I suppose that’s a matter of opinion, so I’ll stick that comment here. He was a loser and her self-confidence was so low that made her think it was opposite day and he was a winner. Gigi was already pretty insufferable for the first half of the book because of her attitude and spreading gossip, so I wasn’t a fan of reading her chapters let alone when that louse would appear.
I was expecting more faith content in this book, but there wasn’t much, which was disappointing (and another reason I dropped my rating). I hope the second book will have more Christian elements.
See y’all on Friday with a new review!
*BFCG may (Read the review to see) recommend this book by this author. It does not mean I recommend all the books by this author.
