My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

He knew what his problem was: it came to him each night before he fell asleep and it whispered loudly in his ear. He was lonely, and the loneliness slithered over his life like a cold snake and stole his confidence and made him shiver inside his own skin.

Sylv chuckled. ‘Well he’s a budgie… but he mocks people and he’s a bird, so…’ ‘So?’ Dawnie screwed up her face, thinking. ‘So he’s called Tequila Mockingbird?’

‘I want to be like Bruce and say “Yippee ki-yay” to his arse.’ Vinnie frowned and followed his mother out into the street. For someone of her advanced years, she was walking quite quickly, her elbows jutting out from her body as if she was looking for a fight… Dilly screwed up her eyes so that her face became tough and imperious. ‘Are you feeling lucky, punk? … go ahead and make my day… Any more of this gossip about Billy and you’ll have me to deal with, Malcolm Frost. And you know what will happen if I hear about you bad-mouthing my friend?’ She waggled the finger under his nose, made a firing sound and blew down the nail. ‘I’ll be back.’

It has taken me years to get it to this state of imperfection.

My Review:

I reveled in every well-chosen word of this lively tale. The storylines were astoundingly witty, thoughtfully insightful, tenderly poignant, and laced together with exceedingly clever and vibrant arrangements of words that whisked me into a colorful vortex where I was practically bouncing in my chair with glee while giggle-snorting and smirking throughout perusal.

Each inimitable character was well-honed, multi-layered, oddly peculiar, vastly intriguing, and uniquely dynamic. The primary characters of Dawnie and Billy were seventy-years young and more high-spirited and energetic than most people in their thirties. I adored them. I was also quite taken with the eighty-six-year-old Dilly who enjoyed watching and quoting Bruce Willis films and claimed she was “on the pull” during their 60s disco adventure. Dilly’s story threads often found me cackling.

While brimming with clever levity and remarkably comical, there were also topical and heart-squeezing elements relevant to our world today including PTSD, grief, anxieties, ageism, bigotry, depression, and social bias. Judy Leigh’s delightful storytelling was smooth, flawlessly engaging, and rapturously transportive. Ms. Leigh cunningly plumbed all the feels while keeping me mirthfully entertained and tethered to my kindle and now finds herself with the burden of a rabid new fangirl for life – unless she starts writing about zombies, I despise zombies.