Purchased – Page 61 – Carol's Notebook

Murder on Valentine’s Day by P. Creeden

February 14, 2018 by Carol2 Comments

I have to assume that I'm not the only person out there who's perfect read for Valentine's Day includes a murder, right? "Murder on Valentine's Day" was a good choice. Emma, our amateur sleuth, is sent to the home of the richest person in town to pick up a cat, even though she tends to be allergic to them. I sympathize with her; I love cats but they make me sneeze and my eyes itch and swell. The cat's owner is dead, apparently of a heart attack, but of course it was actually murder. This is a short story, so we only have a couple suspects, but the author does a good job at planting the clues, even if the motive was a little weak for me. Emma manages to put the clues together, and convinces her dad, the sheriff, whose house he needs to search, but she does put herself in a bit of unnecessary danger. I like Emma. Like...

Christmas Bliss by Mary Kay Andrews

January 9, 2018 by Carol9 Comments

Christmas Bliss was the last of my Christmas reads for the year. I have read two others in the series and really like Weezie and BeBe. This time around, Weezie's getting ready to marry her chef boyfriend, Daniel, but he's off in New York on a temporary gig at a very swanky restaurant. BeBe's pregnant and refuses to marry her live-in boyfriend Harry, but she also might still be married to one of her exes. It's complicated. It's a sweet story. There's not much conflict and the couple of "issues" that crop up are quickly resolved. Weezie and BeBe are great characters, fun, quirky, but I don't know that this would work as well as a stand-alone. It was nice to already know them and appreciate that they were getting their "happily ever afters." I would love to visit Savannah some time, which is Weezie and BeBe's hometown. Books like this just make it seem so charming. Weezie even makes it seem...

Murder on New Year’s Eve by P. Creeden

January 5, 2018 by Carol8 Comments

Murder on New Year's Eve was a fun, short mystery, perfect to start the year with. If you read the blurb above, you know it was murder, of course. Emily's youngish, 20, but her dad, who she has lived with since her parent's divorced when she was about 11, is the local sheriff, so she's been around crime scenes and cops most of her life. When she's helping solve the case, she's intelligent and observant. When she's working with her foster dog, a St. Bernard, she's patient and caring. When she's thinking about her crush, Colby, she seems like she's 13 and I want to roll my eyes, but maybe that's part of being 20 in a small town, shelter by a sheriff father. Given that it's only about 40 pages, I though the mystery was well done. There were enough clues and it was pretty clever. It wrapped a little quickly, but it had to. The characters were well-developed, we...

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...

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...

Double Deck the Halls by Gretchen Archer

November 16, 2017November 16, 2017 by Carol4 Comments

I love reading holiday short stories and novellas, sometimes stand-alones and sometimes ones that fit into series that I may or may not have read. I haven't read any of Archer's Davis Way Crime Caper series, but if "Double Deck the Halls" is a good example of her style, I definitely want to give it a try. Granny Dee is the main character in this one, at the casino for the Winter Wonderland Senior Slot Tournament. I loved her. She is tough and funny and has a lot of life stories. The baddie is dressed up like an elf and is holding Bianca, the casino owner's wife, hostage, complete with a bomb strapped around her middle. Granny stumbles into the situation, but takes control. Bianca seems like she might be an interesting character, a bit snobby, but adores her kid and the interactions between her and Granny made me smile. It was laugh-out-loud funny, and I just liked the attitude of the story,...