Beauty to Die For – Kim Alexis, Mindy Starns Clark

Completed: DNF – gave up on 10/1/12
Source: ARC from Netgalley

Book Synopsis:  Juliette Taylor walked away from her career as a supermodel twenty-five years ago. Now approaching fifty – an emotionally complex milestone — she co-owns a beauty supply company that makes skincare products for salons and spas. Her niche is pampering Christian women who usually spend more time caring for others than for themselves under the slogan:Isn’t it time someone took care of YOU for a change? When Juliette arrives at the Palm Grotto Spa to host a spiritual retreat, she runs into an old modeling colleague, Raven, who had always been disliked in the industry for many reasons. She isn’t there for the retreat; in fact, her presence at the spa is somewhat mysterious.Not long after Raven makes a cryptic threat to Juliette, the unsympathetic back-then beauty is found dead, poisoned by something in the green clay of a chai soy wrap. The following morning, a banner for the retreat has been unceremoniously altered:It’s your turn to be nurtured, to be restored . . . to be murdered.Suspicion is directed at Juliette who has history with Raven and certainly knows how to use beauty products. But for murder?! Now she must find the real killer before the police really take care of her. (Courtesy of GoodReads.com)

Breaking It Down Further: Juliette walked away from the supermodel life years ago, and she thought with no regrets. When her former nemesis Raven shows up at the Palm Grotto Spa the same weekend Juliette is holding a seminar and winds up supposedly murdered, Juliette feels obligated to look into her untimely death. Even though no one was a fan of Raven’s personality, why would someone murder her? And was she even the intended target?

First off, there had been any mention of this being a somewhat Christian fiction book in the description when I first requested it, I wouldn’t have bothered. No offense whatsoever to Christian fiction – I’m just not religious at all and I hate any form of preaching – no matter the religion it’s regarding – seeping into my books. It’s totally not my style and I just don’t enjoy religious undertones in the books that I read. And this book was WAY too preachy for me. I can appreciate a religious or spiritual character, but it was too prominent in the book and it really, really turned me off from reading what should have been a fun and light mystery.

Now let’s talk about the mystery: I wasn’t interested at all. Hell, Raven was a mean old diva! No one liked her. I don’t know if it was the set up or how the story was unfolding, but I wasn’t interested in the mystery at all. I kept forcing myself to read on but truthfully, I found myself realizing that I didn’t care who the murderer was or how it ended. I was just bored and the book had no draw for me.

As far as the love story goes, I was a little less than halfway through the book and the two main characters hadn’t even met up yet. They had met once long ago (in a cheesy, cheesy backstory) and it was love at first sight. Then we wait for them to finally see each other again…. But halfway through the book we hadn’t even gotten there.

I just got tired of waiting for anything interesting to happen and I really had no desire to pick this one back up again. After four months of reading and three months of no progress, I just decided to finally give up and move on to something I could enjoy.

Juliette: Somewhat drab, clearly religious, and a little boring for a supermodel. She was too nice. Lady detectives have to have some mean in them and some kill instinct (so to speak) to hunt down these killers! Being nice will never catch your bad guy and that’s no fun to read either.

To be frank, it’s been so long that I hardly remember any of the other characters’ names. *shrugs*