When all my goodreads recommendations were suddenly urban fantasies about women in their 40s having a midlife crisis, I started to get pretty annoyed. Look GR, I know I'm inching up on 40 but are you trying to tell me something? I went ahead and gave this book a shot anyway and holy crap I'm glad I did. I love just about everything by Elizabeth Hunter, and this is no different. I relate HARD to the main character Robin and I devoured this book in a day. Can't wait to read the others. ( )

A decent read but it took forever to get anywhere.
It almost felt like a politicians speech at times. A lot of words but no content.
The entire plot can be summarized in 3 sentences without leaving anything relevant out.
And the entire rest of the book is just the 3 protagonists talking about their midlife problems.
While quite a lot of valuable wisdom is being conveyed, the plot and the wisdom are just stretched too thin for a 300-page book.

I guess if you are patient and can live with a very slow-moving plot this might be a good pastime. ( )

I wish you did get suddenly psychic when you hit menopause....
This was a good story, I figured out the who/what pretty early. ( )

4.5 stars ( )

Series Info/Source: This is the first book in the Glimmer Lake trilogy. I borrowed this as an ebook for my Kindle through Kindle Unlimited.

Story (4/5): I loved a lot about this story. The basic premise is that three 40 something women get into a bad car accident where their car sinks into the lake. They make it out with minimal injuries but find out they’ve developed psychic powers. Robin is the focus of this book and is being haunted by a ghost that ends up helping her unravel a lot of her family’s dark past. There’s some fun magical powers, a good ghost story, some truly creepy bits, and a well done mystery and I enjoyed it.

Characters (4/5): I really enjoyed the characters here and found them easy to relate to. Robin is in her early forties, has a bum knee (like me), and a programmer husband (like I do). She’s struggling with her kids getting older and leaving the house (not quite there yet) and looking back at her life and wondering if she’s really accomplished anything. Her and her husband love each other but are super busy and have grown apart some.

Robin also has two longtime girlfriends who are hilarious and struggling through issues of their own (one recently lost her husband to a heart attack and the other went through a bad divorce). I love that these are realistic characters with loving families and friendships that start going through some weird stuff. It was fun to read about an older protagonist that is married with a family and going through some strange supernatural stuff that she ends up bringing her family along with.

Setting (4/5): I loved the town of Glimmer Lake. It had an interesting history and atmosphere to it. Very well described and enjoyable.

Writing Style (4/5): The story was well put together and easy to read. I stayed engaged and enjoyed both the mystery and the characters. This was a very quick read and things felt like they were wrapped up a bit abruptly. Hopefully we will see more of Robin and her husband Mark in future books.

My Summary (4/5): Overall I enjoyed this a lot and plan on continuing with the series. This was just a fun, quick read that left me feeling happy. It provided a good, creepy mystery, some fun magic and a bunch of interesting characters that really cared about and supported each other. I can’t wait to read the rest of the Glimmer Lake series. ( )