Good-by Old Paint is the latest volume of C.S. Boyack Hat series. The main characters are Lizzie St. Laurent is a college dropout working multiple jobs to make ends meet. In the first in this series, she visits her grandmother’s house snitches a box from a moving truck and in that box finds a hat. But not just any hat. This Hat can talk and can alter its look to any fashion appropriate to Lizzie’s wardrobe. More importantly, the Hat can transport Lizzie to other places, once it’s on her head. Lizzie is taken by the Hat to a cabin owned by her grandmother, a place which no one knows about, and discovers she can play a mean jazz bass, when the Hat plays through her fingers.
In Good-by Old Paint, Lizzie is a bass player in a band, trying to sell time shares by telemarketing without much success – even with the help of the Hat, and driving for Uber with little in the way of tips. She is visited by two special agents on special assignment from Section 13 of the FBI, one which deals with supernatural goings on. They request her to get rid of a large population of gremlins infesting a server farm of the National Geo-Spatial Intelligence Agency in return for cancelling her seventy-two thousand dollars in unpaid student loans. She accepts.
Let the fun and mayhem begin. Lizzie thinks she can get rid of the gremlins by shooting them with her .357 magnum revolver, but shooting them doesn’t make a dent. Her job is going to involve magic, and Lizzie introduces us to some old friends in a witches’ coven and some new, very odd ones – especially when Lizzie is the recipient of a curse that gradually turns her into a frog and has her eating dried crickets. I choked on my coffee when I was introduced to Dawson Charlie, a glob of sourdough starter that escaped from his crock, feeling frisky. The conversations between Lizzie and the Hat are hilarious, and she is constantly flummoxed as her, a rusted-out Mini Cooper with a torn roof, refuses to start without a booster.
This author comes up with the most inventive, imaginative characters and this book is full of humor.
Goodbye Old Paint is the latest in a delightfully fun series of whimsical fantasy with overtones of chick lit and Disney magic. As a novella, it is a fast, fast read, and I am definitely looking forward to the next Hat adventure. 5 stars
About the author:
Craig Boyack was born in Elko, Nevada, which the author claims has always been a little behind the times and gives him a unique perspective. He moved to Idaho in the early 2000s and jumped into his writing career where he found other writers and critique groups. He likes to write about things that are unusual, and his books are science fiction, fantasy, and paranormal designed to entertain his readers.
The Hat is a seven book series, and the author has written twenty eight books in all, several of which I’ve reviewed and all of which I’ve liked.
You can find the author
On X @vigilante
On his blog, Entertaining Stories: https://coldhandboyack.wordpress.com/
I must catch up with the whole series, as I keep reading some fabulous reviews of the author’s book. Great review, Noelle!
Craig is fast becoming one of my most favorite fun reads!
This is a wonderful review. Thanks for sharing it with all your friends. I looked for it in the usual places and it never dawned on me to look here. So glad you enjoyed the story.
You are most welcome. I updated my bog site and the new site dropped by followers, so I have to start all over again!