Full disclosure: I was given a PDF copy of this title by the author in exchange for an honest review. It took me a while to finish because reading PDFs on the computer just, well, does.
So, with that out of the way, I have to say that Ann Royal Nicholas starts off with a bang. Her main character, Maddie, is having wild sex with an Israeli named Udi when he "dies in action," so to speak.
Nicholas then takes us back to the beginning by explaining the titular Muffia: an all-woman book club. The members take turns picking a book, attending one another's dinner parties ... in short, all of the things you would expect book club friends to do.
Part chick-lit and part murder mystery, Nicholas' book brings us into a Southern California world at several different levels. The Muffia all seem to be fairly well-to-do women, but they face challenges that all women face: marital issues, single-hood issues ... the whole gamut.
Nicholas draws entertaining characters to whom the reader relates, even if some of the situations seem a trifle improbable. Yet, that's part of the fun in this book.
This is a difficult book to review without delivering spoilers. Suffice it to say that I enjoyed it tremendously and would not hesitate to recommend it to mature audiences (there are some scenes that are definitely not for the under-18 crowd).
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