Jed Had to Die by Tara Sivec

Narrated by Amy McFadden

I totally chose Jed Had to Die for the cover and the title. Plus, for the Dixie Chicks’ Goodbye Earl (official video here). And as soon as I heard the audiobook sample, I knew I was gonna like it, because the opening lines of all the chapters are coffee-related snark printed on mugs, and the first one is “Coffee – because crack will get you fired.” This was a retelling of Earl’s story, complete with farm stand, taking place in Bald Knob, Kentucky, a small town Payton Lambert left after high school a dozen years ago, hopefully for good. She was tired of small town gossips and small town minds and all the baggage, and ended up starting a successful opposite-of-Starbucks-style coffee shop called Liquid Crack in Chicago. Payton gets a call about her high school BFF Emma Jo Jackson, however, that has her dropping everything and heading back – Emma Jo is in the hospital with numerous injuries, and Payton’s listed as her emergency contact. Although they haven’t so much as corresponded in 12 years, she knows she has to be there to help.

As it turns out, Emma Jo has been physically abused by her husband Jed, who is also the beloved mayor of Bald Knob, since 2 weeks after they got married, right out of high school. And when Payton realizes the depth to which her friend has sunk because of Jed, she knows she is going to have to be the one to do something to get everyone in Bald Knob to wake up and smell the coffee.

This is an extremely over-the-top black comedy in which the town’s sheriff, Leo Hudson, is the former high school geek turned into the hottest bachelor in town who admits he has always carried a torch for Payton. But now he’s busy investigating the mysterious murder of Jed, who was found dead in Emma Jo’s back yard the day after Emma Jo and Payton return from the hospital, which was also the day after Jed tried to strangle Payton (and was stopped by Hero Leo). It’s a shock to Emma Jo and Peyton, except when they remember they had a little too much to drink the night before, plotted revenge on Jed and cooked up a blueberry pie filled with toilet cleaner – a pie that is now missing. There’s a bit of slapstick humor involved as they try to cover the fact that they might have inadvertently poisoned Jed while under the influence.

OK, you might be thinking, wait, what? A murder? and you laughed? Well, yeah, because, well, humor. Gallows humor, maybe. And the characters – Payton’s assistant Bettie, her ex-boyfriend Benjamin, Deputy Lloyd – are all written with the same heavy-handed, over the top style that makes the book so much fun to read. And narrator Amy McFadden hit the nail on the head with every, single, dang one of them, making it exceedingly fun to listen to as well. This was a surprise for me, because – to be brutally honest – I wasn’t that enamored of the last audiobook I heard with her narrating. In Jed Had to Die, she created dozens of completely differentiated, well-developed characters, which she did consistently throughout the book, never going any farther over the top than the author (which was a high barrier) did with the dialogue and action. And it worked – no crazy accents, just enough to bring them all to life; the hesitating stutter of Deputy Lloyd, who really wasn’t an idiot but did have to deal with a lot of them; the snarky humor of Bettie; the various townfolk, all done to perfection. It was as if McFadden just needed the right type of humor to really exercise her acting chops – and she did it with panache. Honestly, as soon as it was over – and all the details of Jed’s demise have been revealed – I wanted to back it up and start it all over again, because I haven’t laughed that much at a romance novel since I first read Linda Howard’s To Die For (in print – the audio doesn’t really do it justice, actually). By the way, the romance between Payton and Leo is also a strong and hot story line, in case I didn’t mention it before.

I’ll go ahead and issue a trigger warning for domestic violence here, as well as some details of Jed’s death – the descriptions are graphic and if not couched in a humor-filled way, would be more disturbing. I went into this with the knowledge that it was a take-off of Goodbye Earl, and even while laughing at the antics, I harbored a couple of doubts during the story that the author was going to be able to reveal it all to be slightly less offensive than it seemed. I’ll let you decide – I enjoyed it immensely, and I need to try more of this author’s work.

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Melinda

AUDIOBOOK INFORMATION

TITLE: Jed Had to Die

AUTHOR: Tara Sivec

NARRATED BY: Amy McFadden

GENRE: Contemporary Romance

STEAM FACTOR: Glad I had my earbuds in

REVIEWER: Melinda [button type=’link’ link=’http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M9F4JJ7/?tag=audiogalsnet-20′ size=’btn-lg’ variation=’btn-default’ target=’blank’]Buy Jed Had to Die by Tara Sivec on Amazon[/button] [section label=’Excerpt’ anchor=’Excerpt’]EXCERPT: