WHEN WE BELIEVED IN MERMAIDS by Barbara O'Neal

Kit’s sister Josie has been dead for fifteen years.  Or at least that’s what Kit thinks until she sees Josie on a news clip from New Zealand.  Kit takes off for Auckland, where she almost instantly meets Javier, a hunky Spanish musician.  Josie has a hunky man, too—her husband Simon—and two children.  There’s no mystery here, really, except perhaps what caused Josie to fake her own death and change her name.  The premise and the plot are pretty lame, and this book is definitely not high quality literature.  It’s an Amazon imprint, and it shows.  It has a little of everything—betrayal, multiple types of abuse, alcoholism, drug addiction, a drowning and a near-drowning, earthquakes, and a fair amount of sex.  It’s mindless entertainment, kind of like a daytime soap opera.  This is not a book that you can sink your teeth into, although the descriptions of food are mouth-watering, as it does not require much thinking.  Still, I didn’t find it a chore to read, as it held my attention, and the writing was not a distraction.  One oddity is that both Josie, whose new name is Mari, and Kit are first person narrators.  However, the author does not make you guess who is talking, as each chapter bears the narrator’s name.  I did not expect to like this book, but, honestly, I can’t complain.  It’s cheesy women’s lit, but sometimes frothy and frivolous fun is just fine.