4th Time round and Still the Charm (I re-review Pretty Little Dead Girls).

I've just finished re-reading Mercedes M Yardley's gentle masterpiece "Pretty Little Dead Girls" for the fourth time.  The joy of a kindle is that I can mark up fresh notes to myself when different lines caught my eye, and also refresh my memory on old notes from previous readings. On page 220 I found myself adding to "I cried at this bit" with "and again on reread 4 even though I knew it was coming somewhere."

Just some of the freshly caught lines include

"her mind went cottony with despair and panic"

"the car was silent except for the rain and the gallantry of the windshield wipers"

"a grim smile crept onto his lips and held them hostage."

I have written about this book before (here,and here). A book about a beautiful girl who is doomed by fate to be horribly murdered does not, at first hearing, sound like a barrel of laughs or joy. However,  for all darkness at its core there is in it a joyful whimsical celebration of life. It is my absolute go-to re-read for the distraction of some uplifting escapism whenever the vagaries and demands of real working life weigh particularly heavily on me.

It quite defies categorisation being unlike any other book I have ever read. The only novelette/novella that matches it for brilliantly written unique but lyrical strangeness is "Danse Macabre" by Laura M Hughes - which I have reviewed here on Goodreads (reviewed it twice in fact - another book I felt compelled to reread). 

I can only hypothesise that having that M as an author's middle initial must have something to do with this particular gift.

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