Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This book was pretty ridiculous (in my scope of reading.) I'm in my later 40s and this book has its lead character turning 40. She acts and speaks as though she is sixty-five or seventy (or how a 65-70 year old thinks a 40 year old should act or speak.) I scrolled to the front to see if this book had been written in the 1950s, but no. Occasionally a modern device will pop up, such as a cell phone or a laptop. She's 40 and lives in a house for months without a computer? Has to pick up a Go-Phone because she chucked hers into a ditch? I'm older than she is, and I have devices for days. Really, what 40 year old woman in the sweaty/humid South squeezes herself into stockings and a silk black (or other respectable color) suit on a daily basis, outside of a funeral (where the story starts) or investment banking firm? Her "breakout" clothes are something my mother (65) wouldn't even wear- everyone in her town is so shocked that she would wear a red garment with a PARROT on the skirt to church. Red kitten heels? The horror! She eschews Versace and Liz Claiborne (how can those two very disparate designers be mentioned in the same sentence) at the Dallas Neiman Marcus where she shops in paint spattered capris and a raggedy t-shirt with a man who wears bib overalls and a pressed chambray shirt (really, how many times does she have to mention this.) Gad, I'm super casual, but I know not to go to a top flight department store in raggedy old jeans and a hole-y t-shirt. Anyhow, if you are an older (60+) romantic Christian-leaning woman, this book might interest you. The story is sweetly written, but the characters seem 20 years too old as they are written. It's all nicely tied up in a bow. The Christianity isn't overbearing, and while I eventually got that this couple wasn't going to tumble into the sack and get all sexy sweaty in the course of the book, I didn't mind it, because I kept picturing one of my elderly friends from church as the main characters rather than people who are half a decade younger than me. I do like that she stops taking crap from her simpering cousins, bratty adult daughter, and slutty ex-husband, as well as the adulterous elderly women in her town (those who were given jewelry from her skeezy Uncle Lonnie.) It's hard to imagine that 39-40 year old life in Oklahoma is so backward that their young people think, talk, and act in such a way that they sound older than my mother (maybe more like my grandmother who passed away ten years ago.)