The drowning of a television celebrity in her home pool causes an uproar which becomes a firestorm when it's revealed that she was murdered. Colleagues at the television station manage to bumble their way into identifying the murderer, but not until well past the time when Careful Reader has already sussed it out.

This book is listed as the first of a series. ( )

Even without reading the description on the dust jacket, it's pretty obvious, from the start, who is going to get murdered in this book. Beneath her down-to-earth public facade, Constance Young is your stereotypical selfish, egotistical celebrity, and her enemies are legion -- hence, the available pool of suspects is even deeper than the swimming pool where her lifeless body is found.

If Carolyn is a stereotype, so are many of the supects. We have the fanatic who is in love with her, the assistant who has been constantly browbeaten by her, the author whose life seems ruined by her predatory reporting, the arrogant producer who feels betrayed by her move to another network, the long-suffering sister who has been abandoned to care for their elderly mother alone, and the usual assortment of professional rivals in the TV industry. Thiis is one of the weaknesses of the book. Even the apparent "good guys" (or gals) seem more shallow stereotypes than living, breathing people. I didn't feel I really got to know any of the characters in the course of the story, with the possible exception of Eliza.

The plot itself was a decent mystery, which moved along at a fairly quick pace; but there were no plot twists that really took me by surprise. I must say, I did not guess "whodunit" until the very end, when the author (with a rapid series of revelations) was obviously ready to allow readers the satisfaction of figuring it out just before she made the guilty one totally obvious.

I found this to be a fast-paced, competently-written mystery, but nothing special. ( )

Everyone hates Constance Young. It's no secret that her colleagues think she's a world class b***h, and rightly so. But when she ends up dead at the bottom of her swimming pool, it's up to those same colleagues to figure out exactly what happened to her.

Constance had just quit her job at KEY To America to move over to the morning news competition, Daybreak. No one was sad to see her go, but who hated her enough to kill her?

As bodies start piling up and the news business gets fierce, it will be up to KEY Headline News evening anchor Eliza and her coworkers Annabelle, B.J., and Margo to get to the bottom of the mystery.

This was a fun, fast mystery that I enjoyed. The behind-the-scenes working of television news was a great subplot, and the storyline makes perfect sense. This is a great summer beach read. ( )

I finally finished When Day Breaks last night. It wasn't that it took me long to read, I just had a few things on my shelf ahead of it (including The Best of Friends).

I enjoyed it. I really liked the Eliza character and wished there was more about her and her daughter and Mack. I take it I'd probably get more if I read more books in the series. I liked the suspense of the story and liked the clues that were left behind as to the killer's identity. I will confess that I don't usually put too much thought into whodunit while I'm reading. Oddly I'm much more compelled to do that when I'm watching a mystery on TV.

There were many many characters in the book. I found there were a few too many to keep easily straight. I should have kept a list going. I have written in my Bookography the names of at least 8 which I felt were essential to the plot. That's really too many to get to know well in any given book.

Was it just me? Did anyone else find they wished they had a cast of characters to help them keep it all straight? (I'm embarrassed to admit that at the funeral I was still struggling to place everyone...especially I remember wondering who Jason Vaughan was) ( )