Hell's Belles
Kristen Robinette
Harlequin Next, Oct 2005, $5.50
ISBN: 0373880650
In Haddes, Georgia. The four eighteen year old friends know that their lives will be going in separate directions very shortly, as they are about to graduate high school. They have been friends a long time and know they will miss one another. However, the quartet write letters as to where they expect to be in two decades, seal them separately, and "bury" them to be reopened when they celebrate their friendship in twenty years. Each vows to be there.
As the years go by, Erica has become a photojournalist; Mattie owns a bookstore; married Della raises rug rats; and Shay is a psychic. The twenty years has come and gone, and now the time for the anticipated get together has arrived. Each shows up to open their letters and compare what they aspired for, and how that turned out. However, when a teenage girl vanishes, the four musketeers decide they must help anyway they can.
Readers of contemporary tales will enjoy this humorous yet poignant reunion between four teenage friends, now closing in on forty years old. The mystery takes a back seat to the insightful relationship drama characters, as the investigation enhances the audience's ability to understand the motives and personal issues that drive this fine quartet, and how much each one has changed over the past two decades. Kristen Robinette provides a strong character study that showcases how much a person changes in twenty years.