Crush. Candy. Corpse., by Sylvia McNicoll

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Paradise Manor is depressing - the smells are bad and the residents are old. Sunny would much rather be doing her volunteer hours at Salon Teo, but her teacher won't let her. Who says volunteering at a hair salon doesn't benefit the community?

But working with the Alzheimer's patients has a surprising effect on Sunny. Along with Cole, the grandson of one of the residents, she begins to see that the residents don't have much more choice about their lives than she does: what they eat, how they are treated by staff, even what they watch on television. So Sunny does what she can to make the residents happy - even if she has to sometimes break the rules to do it.

But when tragedy strikes at Paradise, Sunny's left to make the decision about whether or not to honor a promise that Cole made to his grandmother about her life and her death.




I liked this book, but I didn't love it.  The cover is gorgeous and the premise is awesome, but it felt like there was something missing.  Sunny wasn't a very likeable character, so it was hard for me to relate to her.  I didn't understand why she had two love interests since she didn't treat either one of them very well.  Sunny also expected her BFF to listen to everything she had to say, then turned around and ignored her friend.

Having recently finished listening to Still Alice -- an emotional read if ever there was one -- I found the "fluffiness" surrounding the Alzheimer's patients in this novel annoying.  There was very little emotion involved; it all felt terribly hollow.

I enjoyed the back-and-forth with the courtroom, Sunny and her inner monologues regarding hair care, and the journal entries for her class.  The rest of it fell flat.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.