NetGalley – Page 29 – Carol's Notebook

Without a Brew by Ellie Alexander

October 1, 2020August 18, 2020 by CarolNo Comments

Sloan Krause and her business partner Garrett are ready to make their Nitro Brewery opening into a bed and breakfast. They plan on a soft opening, but things get out of hand when a lack of local hotel rooms means they end up with a full house. When one of the guests is discovered missing the following morning, and her room ransacked, Sloan immediately calls the police chief. With the guests as the prime suspects, Sloan must use her resources to find out what is going on, and keep the business thriving. I like while Sloan helps solve the mystery, she always lets the police take the lead. She serves as an extra set of eyes and ears, but always shares her information with the police chief. Sloan is good at listening and talking to people, which is how she picks up clues. The mystery was well done. There were several suspects and a couple of twists. Everything pulled together well...

One by One by Ruth Ware

September 3, 2020June 16, 2020 by Carol1 Comment

They keep comparing Ruth Ware to Agatha Christie, so I keep reading her books and keep getting a bit disappointed. I will say One by One is definitely better than the other two I've read, and I enjoyed it for the most part. The setting in One by One is perfect. The group is at a ski chalet but there's an avalanche that isolates them from the rest of the world. The electricity is out, there's not cell phone service, and the door has buckled with the weight of the snow. And one of them is dead after having taken a dangerous trail down the mountain just as everything was being shut down. And then another person dies, pretty clearly a murder this time. I love the claustrophobic feel of the whole situation and the pressure of not knowing who the killer is, just knowing you're stuck in the house with one. There are a lot of characters in the...

Killer Kung Pao by Vivien Chien

August 3, 2020August 5, 2020 by Carol2 Comments

I have to admit that one of the reasons I like the Noodle Shop mystery series is that it's set in Cleveland. One of these days, maybe next summer, I'm going to get up there for a Night Market or maybe take a food tour. We've done a lot of the touristy things, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the museums, the zoo, but haven't made it to the Asiatown neighborhood yet. Lana is the manager of her family's restaurant in Asia Village, a shopping complex. Lana's a great main character, fun, smart and a bit sassy. Yes, she does almost always manage to put herself in danger - she is a cozy mystery sleuth after all. This time around, there's been another murder at Asia Village. The dead woman, Mildred, was not well-liked, cheated at Mah Jong, and was sue-happy. When she's killed at the hair salon, the obvious suspect is her most recent enemy, June. And honestly...

The Eighth Detective by Alex Pavesi

July 31, 2020March 31, 2020 by CarolNo Comments

If you read the blurb above for The Eighth Detective, you can see why I was drawn to the book. I adore murder mysteries and the set up here, an editor wanting to re-publish a reclusive authors detective story collection, but discovering that there's a larger mystery to solve, sounds right up my alley. Overall, though, I was disappointed. Granted, The Eighth Detective is unique. We all know that there are rules to murder mysteries, but here the author plays around with them and shows the variations well. For me though, it was just trying to be too clever. I like a good puzzle, I like twists, but here the author clearly planned his revelations, but by the time he let us in on what was really going on, I didn't care. The ideas behind what makes a murder mystery a murder mystery were interesting enough, but not ground-breaking. The book annoyed me more than anything else. It starts off with...

Bishop to Queen by Lexy Wolfe

July 20, 2020June 11, 2020 by Carol2 Comments

I have mixed feelings about Bishop to Queen by Lexy Wolfe. I didn't know it was the second in the series until I started to get this post ready. I did feel like this worked fine as a stand-alone and given the beginning and end of this one, I do wonder how the first fit in, but don't think I'll bother going back to read it. On the one hand, I enjoyed reading Bishop to Queen. I flew through it and maybe put off doing some work to read it instead. It was a fun book that moved along at a good pace. The characters were interesting and amusing if slightly one-dimensional. The idea of what makes a being human and what makes someone "good," while not a new topic in sci-fi, was explored well here. There were a couple of things I didn't like about the book too. First, as I mentioned, the characters were not a multi-dimensional as I could...

The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne by Elsa Hart

May 27, 2020May 29, 2020 by CarolNo Comments

The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne by Elsa Hart is an old-fashioned mystery, set in early 18th century London. History is poised between the advent of modern science and the superstitions and fantasy of previous eras. Collectors - almost always men - searched the world for things, animal remains, plants, rocks, oddities to showcase in their homes. Or paid others to do the searching for them. They wanted prestige, social status, as much if not more than they wanted to further knowledge. They guarded their treasures, competed with other collectors, and spent much of their time arguing over provenance and ownership. Barnaby Mayne is one of England’s greatest collectors, and his house a confusing, claustrophobic place where anything, even murder, can happen. Honestly, as much as i love funky museums, the Mayne collection seems a bit creepy. Lady Cecily Kay has come to the house to view its plants. There she meets a woman she had known as a child, Meacon, a...