Oblivious – Cyndia Depre
I was due to review this book yesterday for Cyndia Depre’s online book tour and, for the first time I am a day late 
Unfortunately, due to the vagaries of the post, my copy of the book never arrived and although I ordered it off Amazon more than 10 days ago, it actually landed in my hand on Tuesday. Yep, that’s two days ago. So I had spent the last two days madly reading Oblivious so I could get my review posted and not disrupt the book tour too much.
Fortunately, the book isn’t a tough one to get through. On the contrary, it is a rollicking murder-mystery come romance which moves along at a good pace and encourages you to keep turning pages. The book introduces you to Olivia, previously named January Eighth until her parents saw sense a couple of days after her birth and renamed. She is a whirlwind, ranging from completely oblivious to the outside world through to having a canny understanding about the people around her. She is a popular girl-from-a-small-town turned super sleuth, and it is from her that the title of the book arises.
At her parents Christmas party, she meets “Marlboro Man” Tucker who is at the party with another woman. The next morning, that woman is found dead in her house and thus begins Olivia’s mission to solve the crime along with the new man soon to be in her life, Tucker and her best friend and ex-model Josie.
The story is told predominantly in dialogue which is what keeps it moving. There is a cast of characters (some with very unusual names, although perhaps that is small town America?) all of whom know, love and ‘put up with’ Olivia. Olivia is a force unto herself. Her continual habit of mixing metaphors and completely missing what other people are saying apparently belies an intelligence which drives her to solve the case, irrespective of whether the police wanted her input or not! Tucker, new to the town, simply has to keep up with her – something which he doesn’t always find easy to do. The romantic side of the novel comes through these two – his manly protectiveness over her, and her realisation that it is her whom Tucker wants rather than her blonde, svelte best friend.
The only real difficulty I had with the book was a personal one. For some reason, I felt completely removed from the characters. I couldn’t empathise with them and I will be honest and say that Olivia exasperated me more often than not. Although I get the sense that this is exactly what the author was trying to do and in that respect she succeeded very well. The problem was, although she seemed flawed on the surface, the impression I got was that Olivia was perfect – almost too perfect. I have found difficulties in the past with books where the hero or heroine is so perfect that there is no way I could live up to them. They take me back to being bullied by the ‘popular’ and ‘beautiful’ and ‘rich’ girls in the school when I was a child. I couldn’t shake the feeling that because Olivia and Josie fell into this category, then they were people I don’t think I could ever really relate to. Amazing how childhood experiences affect our adult lives, isn’t it!?
Despite the disquieting feeling of not really relating to the characters, I still found this an enjoyable, light and fun read. It’s perfect for the morning and evening commuter train where you need something to make you forget that you are crammed into a busy train with the rain beating down on the windows, and place you in a world where everyone loves everyone else, the lines between good and bad are clearly defined and there really are happy endings.
