A Bad Day for Sunshine

★ ★ ★ ★ 1/2 (rounded up)
This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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We meet Sunshine Vicram on the first day of her new job, Sheriff of Del Sol, New Mexico. It's truly remarkable that one of the state's most successful law enforcement officers won the office in the small town she grew up in, if for no other reason than she didn't run for office. Somehow, she handily defeated the incumbent and now finds herself living in a small apartment in her parent's backyard with her daughter, leading a small force with her childhood best friend as her Chief Deputy.

Her first day on the job is marred by an ominous basket of muffins (literally), a car crashing through the front of her headquarters, a threat from the mayor, a stolen (maybe?) chicken, escaped prisoners, and a runaway/kidnapped fourteen-year-old-girl. Not the most auspicious start, really.

The missing teenager is the Sun's biggest focus—Sybil's a quiet, socially awkward girl with no real friends. Sun's daughter, Auri, had spent some time getting to know her, and she's the closest thing she seemed to have had to a friend. It appears that she has been kidnapped (but Sun has to look into the alternative) and that the clock is ticking to find and rescue her.

Auri's first day at the public high school is possibly rougher than her mom's. Her mom has to deal with hardened criminals, but Auri has to deal with Mean Girls™ who seem to have taken a dislike to her before she even started school. Also, her one prospective friend seems to have gone missing. On the other hand, it's not all bad—there's a hot guy who might as well be named Byronic—brooding, poetic, soulful, with a penchant for physical violence. There's also the bubbliest, cheeriest character this side of Sumi (from McGuire's Wayward Children)—we didn't get nearly enough time for her, and I hope that book 2 uses her for more.

It turns out that at Auri's previous school, she basically was Veronica Mars—doing small investigations (which may or may not have used her mother's police resources without Sun's knowledge) for her classmates. She unleashes these tools in the hunt for Sybil and essentially has to fess up to her mother about what she's done before.

Speaking of Veronica Mars, from the get-go (I was at 4% when I made my first note along these lines), I was comparing the relationship between Sun and Auri as a mix of Lorelai-and-Rory and Keith-and-Veronica (and that was before we learn about Auri's extra-curricular activities). There's a fantastic banter, the two clearly love each other with the kind of love that's the dream of every parent, they both have intelligent and wicked senses of humor, and reading their interactions is probably the best thing in this really entertaining novel.* One of the first things that Sun tells Auri is a twisted first-day-of-school pep talk/warning about teen boys, that ends with a repeated call to ask herself WWLSD? What Would Lisbeth Salander Do? My daughter leaves for college in a few months, I plan on adapting this speech. That's probably also the moment I decided I read the sequel to this book.

* As a sentence, that's a mess, but I like it.

I wish I knew how to work in a mention of Sun and Quincy talking about why they couldn't be K-9 officers, but I can't blend it into one of these paragraphs. So I'll just leave it hanging here awkardly. But man, I loved that part.

There's actually a lot more going on in these pages—but I think there's enough to whet your appetite. There is a lot of serious, dark, material here—child abduction, murder. Something happened to Sun, too, while she was in high school and the hunt for Sybil digs up some traumatic memories (and evidence). Yet, without once minimizing any of the dangerous, solemn qualities of what Sun, Sybil, Sybil's parents, and others are going through—Jones makes this a delightful read.

Could I have lived without the three impossibly attractive men who are all into Sun (and vice versa, to varying degrees)? Yeah, it's a bit much (but Jones made it endearing, actually). I hope future installments dial back a bit on that kind of thing. I'm giving one of those men short shrift, mostly because of time, but I know that in the next book (or the rest of the series), I'll get plenty of opportunities to talk about him.

Similarly, Sun's Chief Deputy, Quincy, and some of the other deputies should probably get a paragraph or three, but you'll have to read for yourself. They're plenty of fun, and really help to round out the cast (along with the rest of Del Sol's residents). Jones' Del Sol, NM is closer to Stars Hollow, CT than Neptune, CA (but you can find traces of the latter in there)—full of larger-than-life characters that you just want to hang out with. Or sit and watch from across the room (or street).

This is as much fun as you can pack into a police procedural without making it a comedy, but still full of grim, grisly, depravity and darkness. It's a nice serving of literary comfort food. There's a freshness to this voice that made me a fan, but my appreciation for this book (and the series it launches) goes deeper. I want to find out more about what happened to the teen-aged Sun (although I have pretty strong theories), but more than that, I want to find out what happens to Sun and Auri—particularly Auri—after this.

I strongly recommend this, you'll have a blast.

Disclaimer: I received this eARC from St. Martin's Press via NetGalley—thanks to both for this.