The Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling ✔✔✔✔✔

There's nothing like ending the year with a great book!  This has been on my Kindle for a while, I was in need of a good read, and started reading this with some trepidation because the reviews have been rather dismissive.  I read the first three Harry Potter books and knew Rowling could tell a good story, so I settled down with this over Christmas in Fort Myers, and found I couldn't put it down.

One reviwer said the characters were rather one-dimensional, but I enjoyed them all the more for that, and besides the time frame of the novel is rather limited.  Another said it was predictable, and to a certain extent it was, but both reviewers - and others- all seemed to agree that, even with these criticisms, the book was highly readable.  That's enough for me, said I, and so it was.

Rowling really likes to appeal to the sense of sight, so her descriptions were quite colorful.  A description of a desk, for example, is done by listing the various ways in which that desk was used. The language of Terri Wheedon and her daughter Krystal was well-done,too - you could just hear them talking that way.

There's a political conflict going on, several parent-teenager conflicts, marriage and relationship problems, jealousy, grief - it's all here, well-constructed, and well-written.

Here's a brief summary from Book Browse:

When Barry Fairbrother dies unexpectedly in his early forties, the little town of Pagford is left in shock. Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war. Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils…. Pagford is not what it first seems. 

And the empty seat left by Barry on the town's council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity and unexpected revelations? Blackly comic, thought-provoking and constantly surprising, The Casual Vacancy is J.K. Rowling's first novel for adults.