Available as Kindle e-book for free! 
 One week ago, I more or less accidentally discovered this book as well as its free availability on Amazon, and I couldn't resist to download and start reading it immediately because of all the hundreds of raving reviews and four- and five-star-ratings here on Goodreads. The blurb sounded interesting and it's available for free, so what could have gone wrong? 
 Well, just about everything. 
 At least, I am relieved I didn't actually pay money for this, but sad that I did not own any physical copy of it, because every time I have had to read the protagonist say 'crappy doodles' I nearly smashed my mobile phone against the wall. (Fortunately, I was able to hold myself back.) "Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes" deals with a young woman called Rose Gardner who is controlled by her abusive mother, while her sister Violet has been able to escape the mother's overbearance and to start a family of her own. In the very beginning, Rose is bedeviled by visions of her own upcoming death, something which leaves her irritated because up to now, she always only experienced paranormal visions of smaller things like losing her keys and finding them with a vision's help. 
 So far, so good. Then her mother is killed early on and since Rose unfortunately managed to decide to become independent from her mother that very same day, she gets into the focus of the murder investigation. (Why should the police be interested in the fact that Rose has an alibi? Oh, yes, they would have appeared competent, something the author desperately tried to avoid throughout the course of the story.) Enter Joe McAllister, the mysterious guy from Rose's neighbourhood who seems to be the only one to believe in her innocence. You don't have to possess visionary abilities to guess where the path for Rose and Joe is leading towards. All in all, the premise was interesting, and to be honest, I was captured by the first fifty percent of the story and read them in one sitting. 
 Then everything turned to becoming boring, unrealistic and simply annoying. In general, I am not averse to romance in mystery stories, but this one felt forced and unnatural, and the metamorphosis from the ugly duckling to the proud swan is a motif I've been fatigued by long ago. The mystery was fairly uninteresting because of the main villain's lazy characterization (the only things I remember about him are his name and the fact that he was supposed to play the villain part), and the writing felt poorly executed and uninspired. In addition - if someone knows he is going to be killed within some days, wouldn't he or she at least try to prevent this from happening rather than coming to terms with his/her upcoming death and trying to enjoy his/her final days? Not even the possibility of fighting the visions Rose had was included, resulting in me being annoyed by the heroine after a very short amount of chapters and finally regretting to have wasted my time with this e-book.