Hell's Belles

When I picked this book up I didn't really read much of the back. When I got home I realized it was a Harlequin book. I was a little dissappointed as I do not enjoy romance novels. However, after I started reading I couldn't put the book down. If you are hesitant about buying this book because you see the Harlequin name and bodice-rippers aren't your style, you're in luck. This isn't a bodice-ripper at all but rather a well written and delightful read.

In Haddes, Georgia the four eighteen year old friends know that their lives will be going in separate directions very shortly as they are about to graduate high school. They have been friends a long time and know they will miss one another. However, the quartet write letters where they expect to be in two decades, seal them separately, and "bury" them to be reopened when they celebrate their friendship in twenty years. Each vows to be there. As the years go by, Erica has become a photojournalist; Mattie owns a bookstore; married Della raises rug rats; and Shay is a psychic. The twenty years has come and gone and now the time for the anticipated get together has arrived. Each shows up to open their letters and compare what they aspired for and how that turned out. However, when a teenage girl vanishes, the four musketeers decides they must help anyway they can. Readers of contemporary tales will enjoy this humorous yet poignant reunion between four teenage friends now closing in on forty years old. The mystery takes a back seat to the insightful relationship drama characters as the investigation enhances the audience's ability to understand the motives and personal issues that drive this fine quartet and how much each one has changed over the past two decades. Kristen Robinette provides a strong character study that showcases how much a person changes in twenty years. Harriet Klausner