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Better Watch Out–all’s well that ends well
Better Watch Out
by Christina Freeburn
If you want a sweet, Christmasy read, then choose another book. In Christina Freeburn’s Better Watch Out, Merry is the main character; her business is handcrafting. As she specializes in Christmas items, her focus as well as the town’s is the same. The town is even named Season’s Greetings. With several murders and embezzlement happening in their town, lots of people are feeling more Grinchy and Scroogey than normal. Even the parishioners of Harmony Baptist are displaying a very mean spirit.
Better Watch Out has a complicated plot. Merry tries to do the right things, but just makes situations more convoluted. She is also dealing with personal issues. Possibly her divorce from her second ex-husband was not finalized. She is still sorting through feelings for her first ex-husband, the father of her grown children. Lottery money is at stake, and trust and friendship fall victim to greed.
I should have liked her guinea pig, Ebenezer, but he just seems to be a squeaky irritation rather than the rescue from loneliness that Merry desires. My favorite part of the book is the ending with a resolution worthy of people with good intents.
I would like to extend my thanks to Edelweiss and to Henery Press for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.
Rating: 4/5
Category: Mystery
Notes: #2 in the Merry and Bright Handcrafted Mystery Series
Publication: October 15, 2019—Henery Press
Memorable Lines:
Now, I felt like I was in a snow globe. Every time the world settled, it got shook up and all the pieces swirled around and all I could do was remain frozen until everything settled back down.
I was thankful the pastor didn’t follow me inside, though his words had come with me, shoving out the Christmas joy from my heart. Nope. I wasn’t going to let it happen. No one would put a damper on my happiness of spending the morning teaching my mom and her friends a new craft.
The first year after a loss was gut-wrenching. It was hard enough to remember to breathe, trying to celebrate something—anything—could make you feel like your lungs were being crushed.
As the Cookie Crumbles–food oriented cozy, but so much more
As the Christmas Cookie Crumbles
by Leslie Budewitz
It’s a tie! I can’t decide what I like best about Leslie Budewitz’s As the Christmas Cookie Crumbles: her winning way with words or her skill in creating an intricate plot. I felt a little funny as I crossed the Mexican desert in 90 degree temps on my trek north to the States as June began to press in. I was immersed in a cozy mystery with a Christmas backdrop complete with snow set in Jewel Bay, Montana, but that is what good fiction can do.
The main character is Erin, manager of the “Merc” aka Murphy’s Glacier Mercantile. She is weeks away from a wedding to fiancé Adam, a very likable guy. Erin has investigative skills that she truly enjoys exercising and which cause others to try to engage her in solving crimes based on her reputation. In this book she befriends a newly returned citizen of Jewel Bay, Merrily, who has relationship issues with her parents and is discovered dead on their property.
There are a lot of suspects for perpetrator of this crime, but the criminal can not be found until the past is revealed. Erin is indubitably nosy and that characteristic could help solve the crime and restore long broken relationships. It also could lead her into potentially deadly situations. Can she balance her curiosity with reason and avoid disaster?
I would like to extend my thanks to netgalley.com and to Midnight Ink for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.
Rating: 5/5
Category: Mystery
Notes: This book is good as a standalone. It is the second in the Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries, but I didn’t feel like I had missed out on anything. There is also a “cast of characters” if you get confused. The book concludes with a recipe section.
Publication: June 8, 2018—Midnight Ink
Memorable Lines:
As surely as you can count on holidays sparking family crises, you can count on cocoa.
In these days of space stations and hybrid cars, stagecoaches seem like figments of Western movie makers’ imaginations, but the valley is criss-crossed with roads named for long-ago stages. They remind me to slow down, and take the long view.
Adam went downstairs to hook up the TV. Going wireless involves a lot of cables.
Twelve Slays of Christmas–a holiday treat
Twelve Slays of Christmas
by Jacqueline Frost
If you are someone with magical memories of Christmas, you will enjoy being immersed in the first Christmas Tree Farm Mystery. We are taken to a Christmas wonderland where the Whites try to keep the family business, Christmas Tree Farm, open in spite of dwindling tree sales by offering a twelve day tourist Christmas extravaganza in the little town of Mistletoe.
Holly returns home after nine years in the big city when her fiancé dumps her a week before the wedding. Murder threatens what should be a happy season for the tourists and locals. Both Holly and the tree farm are in danger. Sheriff Evan Gray makes a believable love interest as they get acquainted quickly through her investigations of several crises. The plot is interesting, the main characters are likable, and the setting is as Christmasy as you can get in a murder mystery.
I would like to extend my thanks to netgalley.com and to Crooked Lane Books for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.
Rating: 5/5
Category: Mystery
Notes: #1 in the Christmas Tree Farm Mystery Series
Publication: October 10, 2017—Crooked Lane Books
Memorable Lines:
“I have two cups of Santa’s cinnamon tea, one spicy apple cider, and a peppermint twist hot cocoa,” I said, setting the mugs on the table surrounded by rosy-cheeked women wearing matching holiday sweaters. They leaned forward at the sight of my mother’s specialty drinks. I slipped cinnamon sticks into the tea and cider, then popped a candy cane into the cocoa.
“Everyone’s capable of something they never thought they could be.”
“You have to make things happen, not wait around hoping something might happen to you.”
education pathways 