I was surprised by how fun this one was. Charlie is in her late 20's and doesn't know what she wants to do with her life. At the beginning of the books, she is working as a clerk at a jewelry store, but that job doesn't end well. Now she's back home in Maui, living with her mother and working at an ice cream shop. Her new plan is to collect the $100,000 reward for solving the murder of a high-powered developer, whose last stop before his death was Charlie's ice cream shop.
Rosie and Dot are two senior citizens who are also looking for the murderer and when they end up chasing the same clues, they decide to team up. Jake, hot cop, is not happy when they seem to be one step ahead of him and his partner.
Charlie and her friends, including Dot and Rosie, are fun and also the type to attract trouble. The women are all intelligent,...
Sleep in Heavenly Pizza is the fourth in the Deep Dish Mystery series but the first I've read. I knew it centered around a pizza shop, obviously, but had a different kind of restaurant in my head. Delilah & Son is way fancier than our pizza places generally. Of course, I live in the land of Steubenville/ Ohio Valley pizza and my favorite pizzeria doesn't have any place to sit and eat, either inside or outside, but they do have a stack of napkins on the counter in case you want to eat in your car. They certainly wouldn't be catering the upscale Chrismukkah party the book opens with. The party winds down a bit early when the hosts' family drama gets out of hand and glassware is broken. The next day one of the guests is found dead in a pile of snow being used for a sculpture competition, and of course the guests and catering staff come under...
I've been putting off writing a post about Between a Flock and a Hard Place because I really don't have much to say about it. I've read a few in the Meg Langslow series, but not enough for me to quite understand her character. She's a blacksmith, which doesn't come up in this one. She's also the mayor's assistant of some kind. Maybe because she always has her nose in everything in town so she might as well get paid for it? And I don't understand why the titles are all bird themed. Granted the wild turkeys are funny.
We do eventually get to the murder. Mrs. Smetkamp is dead and there are several people with motive to have killed her. And several others who just seem shady. I do like the secondary characters, from Meg's kids to the townspeople. They're a quirky bunch and they do make me laugh.
I listened to the audio and the narrator did a...
This time around, Willa and her cheese shop employees are spending the weekend in the neighboring town of Lockwood, which is holding its annual Dairy Days festival. Curds & Whey has a booth there, and both Archie and Mrs. Schultz have been roped into helping with the Miss Dairy beauty pageant. The pageant director, Nadine, has has been running the show for years, ends up dead, and Willa and her friends don't think the local cops are doing a good job with the investigation.
The mystery was good. We have several potential suspects with a variety of motives. There were a couple if twists I didn't see coming and I didn't guess who the killer turned out to be.
As always, I enjoy the friendship and banter between Willa, Archie, Baz, and Mrs. Schultz. It was also nice to see Willa working with Detective Heath again. He's not officially on this case, it's not his town, but that doesn't mean he's not...
Hannah Solace has returned home to renovate and manage Hummingbird Hollow B&B, which she owns with her sister, Reggie. The plan is to make the inn a haven for their guests and the gardens a haven for pollinators. She has become close to the neighbor, elderly Ezra Grayson, who knows all there is to know about the flowers and plants she's trying to grow. to be a fount of information regarding any plant, tree, or flower. Hannah is devastated when when she finds his body and realizes he was murdered. She feels like she is the prime suspect for a number of reasons, so starts snooping around on her own.
I liked Hannah and can appreciate what she's trying to do at the B&B. She's been gone from town for ages and was a bit of a troublemaker when she was young and that gives a bit of nuance to her relationships. The detective investigating the case, Ezra's lawyer, the...
I enjoyed How to Solve Your Own Murder, but it does strain belief a bit. When Frances was a teenager, she receives a bone-chilling fortune that she'll be murdered one day. She then spends the rest of her life trying to both prevent it and figure out who her potential killer is. Of course, 60 years later, she is killed in her own home. Now it's up to her great-niece Annie to find the killer and earn her inheritance. According to Frances' will, the fate of her entire estate depends on who uncovers the truth: Annie, Saxon, Annie's uncle (?) who believes it is rightfully his, or Detective Crane, who would really rather not have amateurs messing around with his case.
Annie does have Frances' diary from when she was a teenager, detailing the time of the fortune-telling and her friend, Emily's disappearance. How much is the current mystery rooted in the past? The diary entries were revealing and it was...
