Customer Reviews

Shop Till You Drop

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

of shopping in a snooty, upscale Boutique and watching CSI.

The main character, Helen has traded a lavish lifestyle to working in a clothing Boutique named Juliana's in Florida for minimum wage. The door always stays locked and is only opened for the rich and beautiful.

Helen discovers that Christina (Juliana's Manager) has a special relationship with each customer. She refers the best plastic surgeons, knows how to immigrant housekeepers and the perfect hit man.

Things turn sour when Christina is found floating in a barrel in the bay. Her customers are mournful, but more desperate to retrieve their secrets that Christina was holding. It's up to Helen to solve the mystery.

I knew that this would be a great read when I saw that Jane Heller called this book, "Irrestible, a heroin with a sense of humor and a gift for snappy dialogue" since Heller is one of my favorite authors.

If you like Heller's collection, you will love Shop till You Drop.

Great book with great naration style. End is a little bit too 'clear', but it is not the most important part of Elaine's mistery style. Fort Lauderdale in its 'best'. More description of area and REAL life down there would be highly recommended in future installments.

Helen Hawthorne has run away from her Missouri home and her husband of 17 years to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where she has taken a job selling designer clothes to skinny rich women. When the body of a skinny woman of her acquaintance is found stuffed into a barrel bobbing in the bay, Helen is forced into the role of sleuth.

SHOP TILL YOU DROP is amply populated with South Florida "characters"-some endearing to Helen, some maddening, and some just plain odd. But surprisingly, they all come across as believable. Even Helen's reason for ditching a successful career to work for minimum wage makes sense once the reason is revealed. And her new identity as a lowly shop girl gives her authentic appreciation and insight into the world at the bottom of the heap.

Elaine Viets is a seasoned writer who knows how to tell a story. She kept me reading up to the very satisfying conclusion, when Helen deftly wields the dead-ender's secret weapon. This is the first in a new "dead-end job" series, and I eagerly await Helen Hawthorne's next work adventure.

I loved this book! I have read all most all of these books in no particular order. This was definitely one of the best.

It explains how Helen came to live at the Coronado Tropic Apartments, the first encounter with Phil, the mystery of Thumbs, and how Helen came to meet her best friend, Sarah. I think my favorite character has to be Margery, her landlady.


Helen's job at the snobby clothing store was interesting. Out of necessity, Helen must solve a murder.

You will like this book and series. I am buying to rest of the books I haven't read and I am waiting on Elaine Viets to write more!

SHOP TIL YOU DROP by Elaine Viets is the first in a series of "Dead End Job Mysteries" featuring heroine Helen Hawthorne, who used to have a high paid career and upscale lifestyle. Because she's hiding from something in her past, Helen has gone "off the map", laying low in south Florida and only working jobs where she can be paid off the books in cash. One of the ongoing mysteries, slowly revealed in this book, is what exactly Helen did that led her into hiding.

Another is what is going on behind the locked (admittance by invitation only, dahling) green door of the tony Fort Lauderdale boutique where Helen works. She slowly realizes that her co-worker, boutique manager Christina, is not quite on the up-and-up, and when Christina leaves on vacation and doesn't come back, Helen has to figure out exactly what Christina has been doing to support her fancy lifestyle on a retail clerk's income.

The mystery plot is mildly interesting, but predictable--it turns out that like the denizens of Wisteria Lane in Desperate Housewives, many of the priveleged, pampered ladies who shop at the boutique are hiding not so ritzy secrets in their lives.

While the mystery plot might keep me reading through this book, it was the cast of secondary characters who will keep me coming back for more. I'm still undecided about how well I like Helen herself--hopefully as I see more of her in the sequels to this book, she'll develop a bit more gumption (I'm not entirely convinced of the worth of her motivations for going into hiding, for one thing)--but I definitely want to see more of the other eccentric denizens of the low-rent old-fashioned Florida apartment complex where Helen lives, and who become a surrogate family helping her to solve her mystery and keep her low-profile life going. There's the no-nonsense, 70-something landlady, the neighbor lady with the pet parrot who has plan after plan for winning the lottery, the invisible guy next door who seems to exist only in a haze of pot smoke coming from his apartment...there are elements of DAve Barry or Carl Hiassen lite in the cast, and they are by far the most intriguing part of the book, and the part that will have me checking out the sequels in this series.

WOW - what a wonderfully enjoyable read. I am a huge fan of Elaine Viet's other series, featuring Francesca Vierling and I'm so glad to have another wonderful characterization to add to my list of favorites. Elaine has captured South Florida perfectly. Helen Hawthorne is very original and the secondary characters are a hoot and a half. And what a great hook - dead-end jobs - something many of us can relate to. This book has a wonderful edge but is still very funny. The opening line grabs you and holds on tight until the very end. Highly recommended

Elaine Viets' new mystery series, Dead End Jobs, (haven't we all suffered through them?) delivers a witty, smart debut with SHOP TILL YOU DROP.

Helen Hawthorne, once quite successful, is forced to lay low, changing cities and jobs as quickly as she used to change her desinger shoes.

Her new profession , salesclerk in a chi chi Florida boutique whose green door keeps out lowlife Sears Robuck rejects, forces her to do more than cater to collagen frozen faces. Underneath the fashionable facade, a nefarious manager has embezzled bucks, and when a murder occurs, Helen must find the perpetrator before her past catches up with her.

A six toed cat, a real character of a landlady, and very cheap wine bought by the case, comfort Helen as she works to solve the crime.

I can't recommend this fresh, funny, fabulous mystery enough! Fans of Janet Evanovich, Jerrilyn Farmer and Gillian Roberts will delight in this new series. All the rest of you will be thrilled to find Elaine Viets and Helen Hawthorne, and like me, wish Helen would change jobs as quickly as possible-we need more Dead End Jobs!

Helen is hiding out from the law and taking any job she can that will pay her under the table. Her first job is at an exclusive clothing store that caters to the highly fashionable of South Florida. Just when she decides her boss is doing some illegal stuff, she vanishes, only to turn up dead. Can Helen find the killer before her past comes out?

The book is advertised as a humorous mystery, but I only laughed on the last page. Not because it was over, but because I finally found something truly funny. I think part of the problem is that the narration often seemed more detached then it should have been. The story was interesting and I liked the character even if I thought Helen's reason for being on the run was rather stupid.

I'll most likely give the series another chance, but this book didn't live up to my expectations.

This was a great book! I really like all of Elaine Viets Dead End Job series books. I can't seem to get enough of the great characters,and I really like the setting of the books.

I really enjoyed "Shop Til You Drop" and look forward to more in this series.

It was an intriguing mystery with loads of humor and a rich Florida atmosphere. I especially liked the fancy dress shop with its thin, botoxed customers, and that the manager kept people out, saying things like, "Nothing in here will fit her." "Well, she could buy a scarf or purse," the heroine argues. "What if she tells people where she got it?" the manager screams. Too much.

Helen Hawthorne is a likeable character as are the other residents of the apartment complex in which she resides. The book was very enjoyable and a fast read. I highly recommend it.