Book Reviews – Page 134 – Carol's Notebook

Slay Bells Ring by Karen Rose Smith

December 13, 2017 by Carol6 Comments

Just a note, Slay Bells Ring is the second mystery I've read this year where the victim was killed with a decorative, wooden candy cane. I don't know if that means I should be hyper alert when out and about somewhere with wooden candy canes or that authors should choose another Christmas decoration to kill people off with. Slay Bells Ring is the first I've read in this series. Festive Christmas covers always suck me right in. It stands alone well, though. You get to know Caprice and her whole family well and understand what's important to her: her family, her friends, and animals. I liked Caprice for the most part, but she is just so good and wholesome and in love that she's a bit hard to relate to. I do love that when she knows she's going into a potentially dangerous situation, she makes sure she has back-up, too many amateur female detectives don't take their own safety seriously...

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, adapted by R. D. Carstairs

December 8, 2017June 29, 2022 by Carol4 Comments

A Christmas Carol tends to be one of my selections every year, whether it be in print, on audio, or watching a movie adaptation. It's just a good story. Ebenezer starts off as an arrogant, obstinate, miserly man, but by the end, he's generous and warm-hearted, a changed man. I listened to the story this time around on the Audible Channel. Honestly, it took me a little while to get used to the full cast. It's just unusual that a story I listen to has more than one, or at most two, narrators. Once I got into it, though, I enjoyed the format. It was like listening to a play with a narrator taking up the pieces that couldn't be handled well through dialogue. It's a traditional Christmas story and I think this format would make it a nice listen for the whole family....

Twelve Slays of Christmas by Jacqueline Frost

December 7, 2017December 5, 2017 by Carol4 Comments

Mistletoe, Maine, the setting of Twelve Slays of Christmas, is a wonderful little town, the perfect place for Holly to head home to after her wedding is called off. Her family and the town welcome her back with open arms and working at the family Christmas tree farm keeps her busy. In all reality, though she's not too heartbroken over her fiancé; he was a jerk anyway, and good riddance. Then she finds one of the townspeople dead at the farm, killed by one of the candy cane shaped markers. It throws her for a loop, which is understandable, and she feels the need to investigate, both to keep the people she loves out of suspicion and to find justice for the victim. Twelve Slays of Christmas is the first in the series and I think Holly will make a good lead character. She's curious and smart, prone to doing what she wants regardless of others telling her to stay out. I...

Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas adapted by Jun Asuka

December 1, 2017 by Carol4 Comments

We always watch The Nightmare Before Christmas around Halloween at our house, but the story's as much about Christmas as it is Halloween. After all, it's Christmas Eve when Jack puts his plan into motion and almost ruins the holiday. This manga adaptation is really faithful to the movie, although it feels a little quicker paced. The style of the movie translates well to the illustration style , as you can see by the cover. I had the digital version though, and some of the smaller details were a little hard to see. Obviously, the movie is better, you just can't beat the songs, but this is a well-done reworking of the original. It would be a great stocking stuffer for any of the movie's fans on your list. It just might be in someone's at our house on Christmas....

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

November 30, 2017November 29, 2017 by Carol2 Comments

While I grant you that The Turn of the Screw is not really a Christmas story, it does have the tradition of telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve as its framework, so I'm counting it as part of my seasonal reading. The Turn of the Screw is fascinating and creepy and leaves you not knowing what the heck was going on. Our narrator is reading the story to folks around the fire, so it's not his story. A governess is hired for two children who are under the care of their uncle. The uncle lives in town while the kids live at the country house, where the governess will be in charge. The uncle basically wants to have to deal with them as little as possible. The governess has written her story down, so everything we know and see is from her point of view. Even she admits that she has a vivid imagination and is “rather easily carried away.” So we've got...

I’m Scheming of a White Christmas by Kate O’Keeffe

November 28, 2017 by Carol4 Comments

Do you ever get to the end of a story or book and think wow, I'm glad that was a freebie? That's how I felt about I'm Scheming of a White Christmas. The blurb made it sound like a cute holiday romance, and while there aren't many reviews on Goodreads, they're positive. My two stars will drag the average down a little. Tilly had potential as a character. She's finally living and working in New York City. She has a job that fits her well and working in a department store is a perfect set up for a Christmas story. When the guy she had a crush in high school shows up, she gets tongue-tied, nervous, the whole nine yards. Happily, he invites her to a party in spite of her awkwardness. The catch is that even though now she's beautiful, in high school she was a bit of a nerd and he was incredibly mean to her. She and her roommate...