eARC – Page 10 – Carol's Notebook

Friend of the Devil by Stephen Lloyd

May 27, 2022May 27, 2022 by Carol2 Comments

Friend of the Devil is set at a posh boarding school on its own island off the coast of Massachusetts. The school, Danforth Putnam, also serves as an orphanage and has for ages. We've got the typical mix of high school kids, nerds, over-achievers, bullies, and staff who range from caring to a little nutty. Into this mix comes Sam, an insurance investigator on the trail of a valuable lost book. Friend of the Devil is slasher horror, with plenty of dead teenagers and lots of gore to slip in. Sam is kind of a hard-boiled detective not above threatening the kids on campus. Harriet, the school reporter, is also digging around, and they both uncover more than they expect. You know how some slasher movies and scary and some are lighter, despite the jump scares. This falls in that second camp. It's funny and over the top. You know who the monster's going to target, you know it's going to be...

Murder at the Blueberry Festival by Darci Hannah

May 3, 2022May 4, 2022 by Carol2 Comments

Murder at the Blueberry Festival is a fun, light read, but at the same time, it deals sensitively and honestly with issues surrounding Alzheimer's and memory loss. The author strikes a good balance between keeping the book entertaining and at times downright laugh-out-loud funny and treating the issues in a kind, caring way. The Blueberry Festival is being ruined by a series of pranks. Well, maybe not ruined - it is attracting more tourists than ever, curious to see what will happen next. But then Lindsey and her boyfriend, Rory, find a dead body floating in a boat just offshore from the lighthouse. With so much going on, the pranks, the murder, so many tourists, the police are a little overloaded, and of course, Lindsey and her crew can't turn their backs on the opportunity to solve a mystery. The small-town atmosphere is done well. Everyone knows everyone, the kids on the floats in the parade are adorable, and gossip...

The Recovery Agent by Janet Evanovich

April 6, 2022April 5, 2022 by Carol2 Comments

The Recovery Agent is super fun and over the top. Don't think about it too hard, just enjoy the ride - or jungle trek. Gabriela's family is in the midst of losing their home, their town, and their jobs after a hurricane did severe damage and they didn't receive any federal aid. Her grandma has a plan. Gabriela just needs to get the chest hidden for decades, over a century maybe, in her ex-husband's house and use the maps and journals to find a treasure. Of course, her ex-husband finds her when she's searching under his floors and decides he's going to tag along with her on the treasure hunt. They head to Peru, on the trail of the Ring of Solomon and the lost treasure of Cortez. Rafe, the ex-husband, and Gabriela are a good team, whether she wants them to be or not. The banter is funny and the chemistry is good. We've got a lot of chasing, globetrotting, drug...

Like a Sister by Kellye Garrett

March 23, 2022March 23, 2022 by Carol1 Comment

Lena Scott's half-sister, former reality tv star Desiree Pierce, is dead. At first glance, it looks like an accidental overdose, but Lena is not convinced. You have to root for Lena. The book is told from her first-person point of view and she's smart, tenacious, funny, and sassy. The other characters are well-done too, from Desiree's best friend to Mel, the hip-hop producer father. And they each of secrets they're not telling Lena. There's a lot about Desiree's life that Lena doesn't understand and she doesn't know who she can trust. It's a very contemporary mystery. A lot of the clues are on Desiree's phone, contacts, messages, photos, her Instagram account. It had twists and turns and I was nowhere close to guessing the killer. It all made sense in the end though. The story kept me riveted to the page. I was invited into a world that I don't usually visit even in books, with rappers and "influencers" and...

Pignon Scorbion & the Barbershop Detectives by Rick Bleiweiss

February 25, 2022February 25, 2022 by Carol1 Comment

I expected to thoroughly enjoy Pignon Scorbion & the Barbershop Detectives. It features a chief police inspector but is at heart a cozy mystery set in a small town in England in 1910. Unfortunately, it didn't really work for me. Scorbion, is a dapper, overly observant detective, à la Poirot. He is a little more aware of other people's feelings and actually has a love interest, but he didn't stand out for me. There are a lot of characters, the folks at the barbershop, the local bookseller, the townspeople involved in the cases. There were too many for any to have more than one or two defining characteristics - this one's short, this one is from France, this one is "modern." I didn't really care about any of them. The mysteries were okay. They're solved through interrogations at the barbershop, with a few behind-the-scenes phone calls from the police station. The flow wasn't great, but there were a couple of interesting twists....

Hot and Sour Suspects by Vivien Chien

February 2, 2022April 27, 2022 by Carol6 Comments

Hot and Sour Suspects is the 8th in the Noodle House Mystery series and I've read them all. I like Lana. She's funny and sarcastic, a little reckless, and she loves donuts. She is surrounded by quirky friends and a warm, loving family who only nag her occasionally. She manages the family's Ho-Lee Noodle House in the Asian Village shopping center. This time around, after an evening of speed dating at the restaurant, a man is dead in his apartment, and Rina, one of Lana's friends from the mall, is clearly the prime suspect. Megan and Lana decide they need to prove Rina's innocence, even if Rina herself doesn't want them digging around. I love the characters in this series and the setting. It does always make me want to order Chinese takeout though. The mystery in this one was fine. Lana has help from both Megan and Kimmy and they do make a fun, mildly incompetent, team. Lana's detective...