Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie She's Dead - Christiana Miller

 A little magic can go a long way -- to really screwing up a girl's life! Mara is having the worst month of her life. At least, that’s what her cards tell her and they’ve never been wrong. She's evicted from her apartment, loses her job and is banned from Beverly Hills. So when the tarot cards predict her imminent demise, she uses a little magic to make her world right. Suddenly, an aunt she’s never met dies, leaving Mara as her sole heir. But when Mara moves into her inherited home, she discovers Aunt Tillie never moved out. She’s still one pissed-off old lady, even post-mortem, and she blames Mara’s magical meddling for her death. When Mara accidentally releases a demon and awakens the spirit of the most powerful witch in history, Tillie’s ready to kill her -- literally. It’s the only way she can think of to save the girl from herself. The witch and the demon, however, have other plans for Mara’s body.

I picked Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie She’s Dead because of a few great reviews on GoodReads.  My curiosity was piqued. After all, how can you resist a down on her luck heroine, a flamboyant gay best friend and a magical toad?  Not to mention a bossy ghost that doesn’t know when to leave well enough alone.The lead character, Mara, is a walking, talking example of Murphy’s Law; anything that can go wrong will. She’s date-less, unemployed, and soon to be homeless. 

Unfortunately, that’s just the beginning of all her problems.  Soon she has a dead aunt, a self-aware house and a demon that can’t wait to evict Mara from her own body.I may be in the minority, but in my opinion, this was not much more than a mediocre read.  The beginning was a bit a slow and went well into the middle of the book before we really got into the “meat” of the story.  The first 92 pages were mostly character building and more than half of that could have and probably should have been cut.  I found the first few chapters repetitive and mostly irrelevant   However, to the author’s credit, there were a few one-liners and humorous situations that definitely made me chuckle, if not quite laugh out loud. The story itself had a good premise, the characters were fun and amusing, and while a bit cliché, the antagonists of the story were sufficiently evil.  The biggest concerns for me were the pacing and consistency of the plot.  As stated earlier, the beginning was too drawn out and the end felt as though Ms. Miller started to lose control of the story.  Plot points were either hastily thrown together or almost abandoned completely. 

Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie She’s Dead wasn’t actually a bad read, especially for the price and will certainly keep you entertained well enough on  a flight or long trip.