Not the Nursery Rhyme: There Was an Old Woman by Hallie Ephron (review and giveaway)

Welcome to our stop on the There Was an Old Woman Book Tour!

Synopsis: There Was An Old Woman by Hallie Ephron is a compelling novel of psychological suspense in which a young woman becomes entangled in a terrifying web of deception and madness involving an elderly neighbor.

When Evie Ferrante learns that her mother has been hospitalized, she finds her mother's house in chaos. Sorting through her mother's belongings, Evie discovers objects that don't quite belong there, and begins to raise questions.

Evie renews a friendship with Mina, an elderly neighbor who might know more about her mother's recent activities, but Mina is having her own set of problems: Her nephew Brian is trying to persuade her to move to a community. As Evie investigates her mother's actions, a darker story of deception and madness involving Mina emerges.

Excerpt:
Mina Yetner sat in her living room, inspecting the death notices in the Daily News. She got through two full columns before she found someone older than herself. Mina blew on her tea, took a sip, and settled into her comfortable wing chair. In the next column, nestled among dearly departed strangers, she found Angela Quintanilla, a neighbor who lived a few blocks away. Angela had apparently died two days ago at just seventy-three. After a courageous battle.” Probably lung cancer. When Mina had last run into Angela in the church parking lot, she’d been puffing away on a cigarette, so bone thin and jittery that it was a miracle she hadn’t shaken right out of her own skin. Mina leaned forward and pulled from the drawer in her coffee table a pen and the spiral notebook that she’d bought years ago up the street at Sparkles Variety. A week after her Henry died, she’d started recording the names of the people she knew who’d taken their leave, beginning with her grandmother, who was the first dead person she’d known. Now four pages of the notebook were filled. Most of the names conjured a memory. A face. Sometimes a voice. Sometimes nothing—those especially upset her. Forgetting and being forgotten terrified Mina almost more than death. Mina found lists calming, even this one. These days she couldn’t live without them. Some mornings she’d pick up her toothbrush to brush her teeth and realize it was already wet. She kept her Lipitor in a little plastic pillbox with compartments for each day of the week, though sometimes she had to check the newspaper to be sure what day it was. Now she started a new page in the notebook. At the top she wrote the number 151, Angela’s name, and the date, then she opened the drawer to tuck the notebook back in. There, in the bottom of the drawer, were her sister Annabelle’s glasses. Mina picked them up. The narrow white plastic frames had seemed so avant-garde back in the 1960s when Annabelle had decided she needed a new look. She’d worn them every day since. It was probably time—good heavens, ast time—to throw them away, along with Annabelle’s long nightgowns, flowered cotton with lovely lace collars that she used to order from the Nordstrom catalog. Mina preferred short gowns that didn’t get all twisted around her legs when she turned in her sleep. It was odd, the things one could and couldn’t throw away. She’d kept Henry’s New York Yankees cap, the one he’d worn to Game 5 of the 1956 World Series when Don Larsen pitched a perfect game in Yankee Stadium, and she wasn’t even a baseball fan. And then there were the things you had no choice but to carry with you. She touched the side of her face, feeling the scar, raised numb flesh that started at her cheekbone and ran down the side of her neck, across her shoulder blade, and down into the small of her back. Mina tucked Annabelle’s glasses back into the drawer along with her catalog of the dead. She picked up her cane and stood carefully. What she really didn’t need was to fall again. She already had one titanium hip, and she had no intention of going for a pair. She knew too many people who went into a hospital for a so-called routine procedure and came out dead. 


Review: This book has been called "a work of domestic noir" and I can't agree more! The cast of  unforgettable characters will keep you spellbound and reading until you finish the book! Admittedly I had guessed what was going on pretty quickly, but the fun was seeing how the characters would find out and what they would do, and who would survive the ever entangled web of deceit. The ending may surprise you as well! I couldn't put this one down and you won't be able to either!

About the Author: An award-winning mystery reviewer, Hallie Ephron is the author of Never Tell a Lie (a Mary Higgins Clark Award finalist that was also made into the Lifetime Movie Network film And Baby Will Fall) and the Edgar- and Anthony Award-nominated Writing and Selling Your Mystery.
Ephron lives near Boston.

Check out the rest of the Book Blog Tour for more reviews, showcases, and possible giveaways!

Tour Participants 

April 1 Review by Kelly @ Kelly's Lucky You

April 2 Review by Heather @ SavingFor6

April 4 Review by Kriss @ Cabin Goddess 

April 5 Review by Mary @ Mary's Cup of Tea 

April 8 Review by Kathleen @ Jersey Girl Book Reviews

April 9 Review by Teena @ Teena in Toronto

April 10 Review by Melissa @ Must Read Faster

April 11 Review by Vicky @ Deal Sharing Aunt

April 13 Showcase @ HottBooks

April 15 Review by Kristin @ Kritters Ramblings

April 16 Review by Melina @ Melina's Book Blog

April 17 Review by Frishawn @ WTF Are You Reading?

April 18 Review by Sandie @ Booksie’s Blog

April 19 Showcase @ Omnimystery

April 20 Review by Tammy @ The Self Taught Cook

April 21 Review by Linda @ Bookvisions

April 23 Review by Kathleen @ Celticlady's Reviews

April 24 Showcase @ CMash Reads

April 25 Review by @ Views from the Countryside

April 26 Review by Mason @ Thoughts in Progress

April 30 Review by Amy @ The Crafty Book Nerd

April 30 Review by Fenny @ HotchpotchBlog

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Disclosure / Disclaimer: I received theis book, free of charge, from Partners in Crime Book Tours for review purposes on this blog. No other compensation, monetary or in kind, has been received or implied for this post. Nor was I told how to post about it.