Love, love , love this book !

Blameless tells the story of Mary Culpepper, a school bus driver in Michigan. The first hundred pages or so are actually pretty dreary. Mary isn’t working. Her father was a womanizer, but is dead. She has a strained relationship with her mother, her sisters, and her ex-husband. She has a cat named Frank. A neighborhood girl, Julianna, stops by periodically to play cards and to tell Mary about her imaginary road trip to the North Pole. Mary plays softball.

I had a hell of a time following along during that portion. Too many names. Too little differentiation between the characters’ personalities. But there’s definitely some inkling of something really really wrong. Mary can’t sleep many nights. The Night Visitor, a stone gargoyle like thing, sits on her chest in bed. There’s also an upcoming murder trial in which Mary is to be a witness, though what exactly about isn’t clear for some time.

Mary’s essential problem is a combination of two things: overwhelming untethered guilt, and an aversion to facing or even acknowledging her guilt and other problems. For instance, she never had it out with her ex-husband when he cheated on her and left her for someone else. Instead, she was a bridesmaid in their wedding! It’s pretty messed up, and that’s not the worst of it. When Mary starts flirting with a married man, the pigeons come home to roost. (I do have to say this is not a people-have-affairs-and-feel-guilty-about-it novel.)

It’s fascinating actually. It helps that most of the characters are charming, though a little evilly so.

Full review: http://reading.kingrat.biz/reviews/blameless-lisa-reardon ( )

Very good. A woman bus driver finds a dead child who was a victim of child abuse. She has to go to court and she has a break down. She also starts an affair with a married man after she befriends his daughter. ( )

Blameless: A Novel by Lisa Reardon (2000) ( )