Miss Me When I'm Gone by Emily Arsenault

Gretchen Waters, author of the surprise best-seller Tammyland, is found dead on a set of dark, crumbling stairs outside the library where she had just finished a reading and book signing. A terrible, unfortunate accident, the police say. Yet there is the question of her missing purse.

After the funeral,  Gretchen’s grieving parents ask Jamie, her best friend since college, to act as literary executor to try to piece together and finish up the manuscript for Gretchen’s second book. Of course Jamie will do it – for Gretchen – no matter that she is nearly seven months through her first pregnancy. As Jamie plows through notes and portions of Gretchen’s manuscript it becomes obvious that this second book is not within the scope of the publisher’s plan for it and is much more personal than the first. Someone breaks into Jamie’s house; Gretchen’s purse is pulled from a nearby lake; the police – and

Jamie – begin to investigate a little more intensely.

Miss Me When I’m Gone is a pretty decent whodunit (and whydidit). There is an aspect of this book that I didn’t really care for, though.

Gretchen’s first book was a travel memoir of sorts based on a road trip she took following the end of her marriage. She packed her bag, loaded her CD player with music by female country stars, and toured the South, trying to make sense of the sadness and sorrow that is pervasive in country music by visiting the places these famous women lived. So Arsenault’s book chapters are written to be either a.) a chapter from Tammyland, b.) excerpts from Gretchen’s notes, or c.) Jamie’s first person account of her adventures. Frankly, I’m not a huge country music fan, so the Tammyland chapters didn’t do much for me. And some of them seemed not much more adeptly crafted than what a capable eighth-grader could write for a school report. Which makes me wonder if I would have missed any part of the story if I had just skipped over the Tammyland chapters. I’d almost be willing to give it a try, except I don’t have enough time to read all the books I want to read once, so I’ll never waste time on a second reading of a book that wasn’t riveting the first time. If you pick up this book and skip the Tammyland chapters, let me know how it worked for you.