Nature Girl by Carl Hiaasen - Book Review

Pros

• Hiaasen’s wacky flair and style
• The quick pace of the absurd and loopy plot
• The entertaining characters’ names (and some of their personality traits)

Cons

• This fluff is so light sometimes it's sickly
• The plot is a bit over-sexed and underdeveloped
• The story keeps spinning until it runs out of gas (instead of really reaching a destination)
• Some of the quirk is just a bad joke gone wrong

• The Seminole, Sammy Tigertail, and his accidental killing of Jeter Wilson in the everglades that begins and somehow mirrors all the accidents to come
• Honey Santana, sexy single mom of an adolescent and a bit crazy too boot (but completely lovable), gets a rude call from a telemarketer
• Boyd Shreave, said rude telemarketer, gets fired and goes complaining to the woman he’s having an affair with, Eugenie Fonda
• Boyd’s wife, Lily Shreave, knows of the affair and has a P.I. follow and tape Boyd’s “engagements” with Eugenie Fonda
• Honey sets up a way to teach Boyd a lesson, via his own real estate scam telemarketing ways, by getting him to come on a trip with his mistress to the everglades…where Sammy Tigertail is trying to disappear
• Mix in an ex-husband, a psychotic stalker, a lusty co-ed, cultish religious followers, and other oddities stewed in the humid Florida sun

That about sums up the theme of this mad hatter novel. Hiaasen is definitely having a time with his characters, albeit one or two nutcases too many. His main character, Honey Santana, is a bit loopy when she’s not on her meds, but she’s a loving mom who just wants her son Fry to live in a world where people treat each other with respect. And though Hiaasen’s world is full of fanciful coincidences and eventual comeuppances, there are still some people that just don’t have much respect for others.

Like telemarketers and private investigators with their sleazy affair videos they keep in vaults. No worries though. These are the guys that get the comeuppances. And they just happen to cross paths with a half-breed Seminole who sees ghosts, a horny coed who has the hots for the mysterious Seminole, a tall, beautiful middle-aged woman who always picks the wrong men (including one who killed his wife for her), a drug dealer and former mayor who’s the ex-husband of Miss Santana, and a psychotic restaurant manager/stalker with a hand with reattached, yet misplaced digits. Hiaasen’s mix of characters tends to make a bipolar mother who hears songs and voices in her head seem like the only humane and sane person in the world as she desperately tries to love her son.

Sounds like a bit much? Oh, it is. And there’s even more. You’d be surprised what you can find in Hiaasen’s everglades this time of year.