Review: The Best Little Motel in Texas

The Best Little Motel in Texas by Lyla Lane
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

" You couldn't move a body with someone and not develop an instant life-long bond..."

A twisty,turny mystery with just a tiny hint of future romance.

I hope that this book goes through one more round of editing. There are so many inconsistencies that I kept having to back-track to make sure I wasn't going crazy! 

I love these characters, and I love the  Texas women who can stab you in the back while being as sweet as pie to your face. Something about Southern women. Oh, don't get me wrong, we Northeners can be right bitchy, but we ain't sweet about it!

I loved the idea of a bordello for the  *ahem* older set! The Chicks are fiesty and outspoken, and when the pastor dies while having a 'date', things start to get really amusing.

But it wasn't from a heart attack as first thought. It was something more evil, and Cordelia and her chicks set off to find the real culprit. I was shocked at who it turned out to be that did the murdering ...I was hoping that it was someone else, but what are you going to do? 

Cordelia is the perfect foil for these oldtimers. She was straight-laced, cleanlyness obssessed and knew nothing about owning a brothel. She's ready to give up and return to her librarian's job, but circumstances just keep pulling her back. And it's a good thing that she stayed.

The chicks are hilarious, not all the time, mind you, sometimes they can be annoying, and the rest of the townspeople are a vivid picture of what really small-town life is all about.

There looks to definitely be a second boo in the works.

*ARC was supplied by the publisher Harper Perennial/HarperCollins, the author, and  ATTL/Edelweiss and NetGalley.

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SUMMARY: "A charming, edgy mystery about a young woman who unexpectedly inherits the best little motel in Texas – replete with a feisty set of golden working girls, a poisoned priest, and a sleepy hometown thrown into chaos.

After a childhood spent combing the dive bars of Sarsaparilla Falls to collect her fun-loving momma, Cordelia West now enjoys a simple, respectable life in Dallas. Then one phone call from the hometown she’s spent years trying to forget throws it into chaos.

Cordelia's great-aunt Penelope has passed away, naming Cordelia the sole heir to the Chickadee Motel. She has no memory of a great-aunt and no interest in hospitality, but the will stipulates that the motel can’t be sold until its residents leave or pass away – so she reluctantly heads back down to Sarsaparilla Falls to figure out who's living in the Chickadee, and how to get them out.

But upon her arrival, Cordelia discovers the Chickadee isn’t a motel—it’s a brothel, housing three women in their sixties known as the Chicks. For decades, Daisy, Arline, and Belinda Sue have entertained the men of Sarsaparilla Falls (with their wives’ blessings)—including the upright Pastor Reed-Smythe, who thunders against the town’s favorite sins when he’s not indulging. Cordelia doesn’t want to be a hotel manager or a madam, but she can’t just sell the only home the Chicks have known—especially not after the pastor is found poisoned in Daisy’s bed.

With the Chicks—and the town—on the verge of a breakdown, Cordelia steps up to mop up the mess. For a small town, there are plenty of could it be the obsessed nurse with access to arsenic? Developers eager to gobble up the land? The righteously angry town librarian? Things are heating up in Sarsaparilla Falls, and with the Pastor’s obnoxiously attractive son Archer—Cordelia’s childhood nemesis—investigating the Chicks and getting close, straightlaced Cordelia may just have to get a little dirty to make a killer come clean."