The Housewife Assassin's Handbook: Volume 1 (Housewife Assassin Series) Paperback – 13 May 2011

A good read with characters you like then dislike then like.A rollercoaster story of a CIA husband who gets blown up leaving his wife and children to cope without him. There are many twists and turns but ultimately as you would expect there’s more to it than that, including the widow becoming an assassin and her getting involved with her husband’s nemesis.Enjoyable story if you ignore plausibility but that is unlikely to stop me reading the next book in the series.Worthwhile read.

Donna Stone is a widow with a rather unusual job to support her family – she’s an assassin for the CIA. She fits assignments around the social whirl of trying to be a good parent, though she’s decidedly better at her job than at being a supermom.I wasn’t sure at the beginning of the book – okay, so it’s supposed to be a light and fluffy read, but even so, I found the opening scene with handcuffs, Viagra, a mafia boss and an assassination a bit hard core, but I read on to give it a chance, and I’m glad I did. While Donna’s attempts to mesh her two lives together sometimes stretch credulity rather excessively, the story races along easily, and there are plenty of laughs, especially with the catty mothers who rule the school social affairs, and the guy who is brought in to pretend to be her husband.On the downside, the housewife’s tips at the start of each chapter are inane to the point of annoyance (I stopped reading them), and there are an irritating number of typos, particularly in the earlier chapters. Plus, although there is a climax to this story, the ongoing thread is a pretty big one – so not technically a cliff hanger, but skirting pretty close to it.Having said all that, I did still enjoy it (once I got over that beginning) so ff you are looking for something easy to read that won’t engage your brain too far, and you’re okay with sex and violence mixed in with humour and a non-challenging plot, then you may well enjoy it. I’m not rushing out to buy the next one (this one is free), but I may do so at some point when I want to switch my brain into a lower gear.

This story is the first in a series. It is not meant to be an exciting thriller based in a realistic world of good agents versus bad gangsters or terrorists. There is very little bad language although there are some explicit sex scene descriptions with a little romance on the side.I thought it was a fun, light read and I don't agree that the ending is a cliffhanger although it definitely leads in to the continuation of the overall story in the next book. I look forward to enjoying that just as much!

It is only when Donna Stone’s husband is killed by a car bomb that she finds out that he works for Acme, a shadow government agency that spends its time bumping off bad guys. To get revenge on his killers, a terrorist group called The Quorum, she is persuaded to take his place as a government assassin.OK, it’s clichéd and full of holes with a plot as thin as her sexy underwear and she’s so naïve that she can’t see when she’s being spun a line … even though the rest of us do, but, hey, it’s a fun book. Even as she gorily dispatches another villain – does the American government really go around knocking people who hack it off? – we have to grin as she does it.This is a lightweight read that doesn’t stress the intellect but certainly exercises the smile muscles and it makes a change for the main protagonist to be a feisty woman rather than a muscle bound super hero.

So this is a bit of a weird book. It tells the story of Donna who is a normal mum of 3 married to the love of her life. Unfortunately her husband is killed just as she is giving birth to her 3rd child and it is then that Donna discovers her husband was a secret agent for a branch of the CIA. Unbelievably this organisation decide that they want to recruit Donna as a new agent and she agrees. She then has to juggle being a single mother with killing underworld characters in sometimes quite gory ways.She is trying to find the people responsible for killing her husband and when her agency think they are on to a good lead they bring in a new agent to help with the investigation. He poses as Donna’s husband and everyone believes it including the children! They give off an air of being a normal suburban couple and use this cover to investigate their neighbours.There is quite a sweet romance that grows between Donna and this new agent but just as things seem to be going well a huge shock hits Donna and she is left wondering who she can trust.I got this book as a light read for holiday and it fulfilled that job very well. You could drive a truck through some of the plot holes but it was entertaining with a bit of sex and violence thrown in.

The book is based on the interesting premise of a single mother struggling to raise three children in suburban California who moonlights as a paid assassin for a government agency taking out the bad guys who murdered her husband. The book has a quite raunchy beginning which contrasts with the banal crises of a mother looking out for her children. The idea of an ordinary hard-pressed housewife and mother being a seductive hit woman is quite amusing to begin with, but after a while I began to find it repetitive and somewhat tedious. I was just about to give up when there was an interesting twist about two thirds the way through, which re-engaged me wondering how it would play out. Overall the story line was quite good (although totally unbelievable), but it was a bit too drawn out for my tastes. Also the action towards the end was not very gripping or convincing. Given the number of sequels, there is clearly an audience for this type of book, so don't let me put you off, but in the end it was not really for me.