An Unforgettable Voice

I am listening to A Grown-up Kind of Pretty by Joshilyn Jackson. The author narrates the audiobook, her slight southern drawl adding charm to this story of three generations of Slocumb women and the effect the discovery of a tiny grave in their backyard has on them. Not only is the story read in way that brings the characters alive, but the turns of phrase add a wonderful flavor to the story. I am only a few chapters in and have already found numerous phrases that grabbed my imagination. Here are just a few, if I wrote up all the great lines in the book it would be as long as, well, a book:

Desperately seeking lawyer. Must like long walks on the beach, not getting paid, and losing. I hear there's a whole mess of lawyers like that: they keep an office between Mermaid Cove and the Unicorn Forest.

My folks must have felt spanked up one side of their thin Baptists skins and down the other.

Nobody past fifty has a brow that smooth without Botox, especially not while saddling up to rough-ride and rule the law as if it were her own nasty tempered pony.

I would never have known about about the other Mosey Slocomb if Tyler Baines hadn't brought his mullet head and chain saw over to murder my mom's willow tree.

He talked lower, like he thought her boobs had microphones in them and if he aimed right he could order up a chili-dog combo.

You wouldn't let some godless heathen slap ham and mustard on some Catholic guy's Communion bread.

By the time she was school age and took to scrapping with any boy who said he could whoop her, there hadn't been a day got by me where I hadn't wanted at some point to sell her to the gypsies.

She writhed like half a bag of snakes.

I answered in a voice so fake cheery-ghastly that I sounded like the zombie version of June Cleaver.

Don't miss Joshilyn Jackson's other books which are equally enjoyable. I can heartily recommend The Girl Who Stopped Swimming.