Category Archives: Book Reviews

Reviews of Books

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Brownies & Broomsticks by Bailey Cates

 

Just finished this one, I will start by saying I don’t read too many paranormal/magical cozies.  I prefer the plots to be heavier on the mystery and lighter on the magic/paranormal elements when I do read them.  I loved the Savannah setting.  I visited Savannah last summer and it is a lovely city, so I really did enjoy reading a book set in Savannah.

Mungo the Magnificent as a sidekick was cute and entertaining without being obnoxious.  The protagonist, Katie, is not aware of her powers or history at the beginning of the book.  She moves to Savannah to help her Aunt and Uncle start a bakery business.   Through her Aunt she learns more about her history and her powers.  There is an entire coven of witches waiting to bring Katie into the fold.

At an initial party hosted in the bakery, one of the city’s leading ladies is murdered.  Katie’s uncle is the suspect, so Katie takes it upon herself to attempt to clear his name.  Her investigation involves varied side kicks and sometimes magic.  There are also two competing romantic interests thrown in to the mix.

The red herrings are plentiful, but the resolution was lacking.  Information to solve the crime wasn’t revealed until the reveal. Overall, a cute, quick cozy, that will be good for readers who like paranormal/magical cozies.

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The Strangling on the Stage by Simon Brett

 

Read this book by mistake, I picked it up from the library thinking it was the next book, however it turns out I missed two books from the series.

I have been reading the Feathering series by Simon Brett for quite a while and I really enjoy them.  I love the characters of Jude and Carole and their atypical crime solving partnership.  This outing in the series involves an amateur dramatics group that Jude and then Carole become involved in.  One of the actors is strangled with a noose and the investigation takes off!

I always like Simon Brett’s humor at the expense of comfortable middle class life with petty vanities and rivalries galore.  I am going to have to go back and read the two books I missed before I say anything more because Carole and Jude’s friendship/partnership seems somehow different in this, number 15 in the series.  Perhaps it is something that I missed in the previous books.   I didn’t feel that Carole had a strong a role, especially initially in the book and that Jude’s “healing” practices took over at times.

Really great series overall and I will go back and read what I missed.

 

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Sprinkle with Murder by Jenn McKinlay

 

Fun first in a series.  Well written with a fun trio of main characters, Melanie, Angie and Tate.  Melanie and Angie are co-owners of  the Fairy Tale Cupcake Bakery.  Tate’s fiance is murdered and that puts both Tate and Melanie directly in the path of the investigation.  Melanie start investigating to save herself and Tate.  There are several probable suspects and Melanie does conduct her own investigation into the murder.

I did figure out the mystery far before the end, so perhaps a one of the clues was a little too obvious, but I still enjoyed reading it to the end.  The only other issue I had was the relationship between Angie’s brother Joe and Melanie.  It seemed to me unrealistic that Melanie was Angie’s best friend and yet had not had contact or interaction with Joe since she was in middle school and so had never gotten over her crush.   This romance was a pretty light element in the book though so this is not that big of a problem.

I will read more in this series and see where it goes.

 

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Tressed to Kill by Lila Dare

 

Very cute first in a new series.  The southern setting is charming and the author doesn’t overdo it by interjecting too many cutesy southernisms.  The premise is that the protagonist, Grace,  has returned home from a life and marriage in Atlanta to the small town she grew up in and where her mother,Violetta, still lives.  She now works in her mother’s salon and is attempting to start over.

One of the town’s leading ladies is murdered after a public argument with Violetta, which makes Violetta the prime suspect.  There is the prerequisite hunky cop, Dillon, or Marshall as Grace refers to him in their bantering.  Hank, Grace’s ex, is also in town and they often run into each other adding to the drama.

The red herrings were well done and I didn’t solve the main mystery ahead of time which is always fun.  A well done mystery plot tying together multiple, mysteries past and present.

Some of the descriptions could have been a little less wordy but that was a very minor issue.  All in all, a fun quick cozy mystery read and good start to a new series.

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Sink Trap by Christy Evans

 

Sink Trap has been on my TBR list for a while and it was actually available from my local library so I picked it up this week.

There is a lot to like in this first of a plumbing themed cozy mystery series.  The main character, Georgiana Neverall, her mother, Sandra, her “not my boyfriend”, Wade, and boss, Barry are all good characters.  They are interesting and behave as they are drawn. The relationships between them flow naturally in conversation and are believable, (who doesn’t have moments that their mother drives them nuts?)  The plumbing theme is not overwhelming but the pieces included are interesting, at least to me.  The book is well written as far as voice and tone for a cozy mystery.

The issue is that it is patently obvious almost from the beginning of the mystery, when Georgiana finds the brooch of Ms. Tepper in the sink trap, who the villains are and basically why they did it.  The rest of the book is spent with the sleuth leading the readers around as she chases red herrings and tires to convince others that a crime has actually been committed.  She lets her feelings of animosity towards certain characters drive her investigation rather than looking at what is actually happening. In fact, she doesn’t really solve the mystery, the reveal is more that the killer(s) come out.

There is enough enjoyable here with the characters and the setting that I will probably give another in the series a try.

 

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Good Enough to Eat by Stacey Ballis

 

Picked up this one from the library and really enjoyed it.  If I had to classify it, I would call it more women’s fiction, however there is some romance in it.  Melanie, the protagonist, has lost a lot of weight, basically a whole other person.  On top of that she has changed careers, giving up the law for a healthy eating food business and just as she is feeling the success of these positive changes her husband leaves her.  The fact that he left her for a heavier woman and a woman who was her friend just added salt to the wound.

This could have been a very typical “fat girl gets thin, finds love, lives happily ever after”, however it is not.  The author does a great job showing that the weight is not the defining feature of Melanie, there is so much more to her, and any person than his or her body size.  The supporting characters, Kai, Phil, Nadia and Nate all have interesting lives and are well fleshed out.  The intersection of this particular group of people is believable and works with the plot of the story.

The treatment of food addiction/comfort eating/unhealthy relationship with food is well done.  Food is a really difficult addiction to live with and conquer, mainly because you can’t just go cold turkey on it 🙂 and it is not a very sympathy inducing addiction.  This struggle is really brought to life well through Melanie, her actions and reactions and her relationship and conversations with her nutritionist, Carey.  As someone who struggles with my own weight, I could so relate to Melanie’s feelings and experiences and they rang very true to me.

I loved the ending…I won’t give it away but definitely not typical.  Highly recommended read!

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Divorce Can Be Murder by Victoria Pade

 I picked up this one at my local second hand book seller.  I hadn’t heard anything about it but the cover and title intrigued me.

Jimi Plain is a technical writer and a single mother of 2 girls.  She has an ex, who is the girls’ father.  He is active “off screen” through broken promises and phone calls interwoven in the story.  Danny is her policeman cousin and Nell is her Grandmother.  At the beginning of the book, Jimi is moving her girls into the house with Danny and Nell somewhat regretfully but financially necessary.  Other characters include Linda, a good friend and neighbor in the middle of a divorce, and Audrey, a nun and counselor, who runs a divorce recovery group.  Although Audrey is a main character, and Nell and Danny both are regular church goers,  the story line is not preachy or full of religious references or moral “lessons”.

The Divorce group is at the center of the murders and the plot twists and turns.  The character of Jimi was interesting and sympathetic.  The other members of the divorce group seemed to me to represent the gamut of reactions to divorce and were very well done.  Jimi’s girls also gave realistic faces to teen children of divorce.  The representations of divorce and the impacts not only on the couple divorcing but others around them were particularly well done.

There were many intersections in the relationships among the characters and this led to red herrings in the mystery plot line. I did figure out the culprit at chapter 25 out of 35, however there was one piece I was wrong about and I did doubt myself a little bit so the book was still very engaging and the twist right at the end was unexpected.

A warning, simply because many cozy readers don’t like cursing at all, there are about two instances of cursing in the book but no sex.  That is a non-issue for me, but I do know that some readers expect their cozies to be clean.

I enjoyed this book and would read another in the series.  I am glad to have stumbled across it.

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Dying in Style by Elaine Viets

 This book was this month’s read for the Cozy Mystery Corner Group on Goodreads.  I was pleasantly surprised by this cozy.  Sometimes fashion themed cozies are filled with shallow brand name dropping characters, but this was not like that at all.  Josie is a single mom, who works as a mystery shopper to support herself and her daughter.  She carries out her job wearing a series of costumes to fit in with the nature of each of her jobs.  The descriptions of how she gets into character are quite funny.

She gets involved in a series of murders related to poor reviews she gives a designer store that is in financial trouble and slated for a takeover.  The police suspect Josie of the murder and she begins to investigate in order to clear her own name.  Josie at times seems to charge headlong into danger without much of a plan, but on the whole she is a likable character.  Her mother, Jane, her daughter, Amelia and her friend, Alyce, are interesting sidekicks.  Jane’s plot line is particularly interesting and timely.

I really enjoyed this cozy and will be interested to see how the characters grow and change throughout the series.

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Wicked Autumn by G.M. Malliet

 

I read this one as the group read this month for the English Kindle Mystery Club on Goodreads.  I have previously read two other books from this author, Death of a Lit Chick and Death of a Cozy Writer.  The two books appeared to be a parody of cozy mysteries, perhaps some kind of satire, but they didn’t really work for me in that form.

This book started out with very much the same tone as the previous books, but then seemed to change  somewhat at around page 100, as though the book couldn’t decide whether it was a cozy or a parody. That was about when we got heavily introduced to the sleuth Max, ex MI5 agent turned village Vicar.  Max as a character just didn’t seem very real.  The whole dramatic event turning him from MI5 agent to a man of the cloth, who just doesn’t seem very religious or all that interested in the village didn’t really work as a character.    He only really sparks to life during the investigation of the murder.

Overall, I was disappointed with this.  Many characters seem cartoonish, not well drawn.  I assume it was intentional, perhaps meant to be a parody, however not funny enough for me for a parody.  The pacing was slow.  I usually finish cozy mysteries in one sitting.  This one I kept finding excuses to put it down and get up and do something else.  There were some point of view issues and other little style points I wasn’t crazy about.

While I will probably not read another in this series, I do know many people really enjoy G.M. Malliet’s writing and she has  won an Agatha for a previous book and that Wicked Autumn has been nominated for an Agatha, so perhaps it is just me.