Money Back Guarantee by Hunter Shea

In the third book of the series, AdventureCo is still up to its old tricks. This time, Rosemary is looking for a refund on the cardboard submarine her son begged her to buy for him. However, it seems that the mysterious company will go to any lengths to keep from coughing up the dough. It didn’t count on Rosemary, because hell really hath no fury like a mother scorned.

I’m sad that the mail order massacres series ended after book three. I would love to see stories about rockets, ghosts, and army men (all briefly mentioned as available from AdventureCo in this novella). All good things must come to an end, I suppose, and I appreciate Shea ending it on a high note.

This time round the protagonist is suburban housewife, Rosemary, who I imagined as Kate Jackson as she appeared in the 1980s spy comedy, Scarecrow and Mrs King. Rosemary runs Tupperware parties to bring in extra income for her family, keeps a nice house for her husband, Gavin, and 9 year old son, Dwight, and is generally a pleasant, capable woman.

Just how capable Rosemary is becomes apparent in the second half of the novella, when the plot takes a sharp turn in an unexpected direction.

I found Rosemary less well developed than the protagonists in Just Add Water and Optical Delusion. Perhaps I am more critical because she is the first female protagonist out of the three books, but I felt she lacked the nuances of David, Patrick, or Martin, at odds with the revelations about her past that surface late in the plot.

While the first half of the book is enjoyable, it is light on conflict. The second half makes up for it by being pure fun. While it relies heavily on the idea that moms can do anything, it is highly entertaining, and if I had a time machine, I would travel back to the mid 80s to make this into a movie with Kate Jackson.

I award Money Back Guarantee…