Saturday, January 14, 2017

Weekend Book Reviews

Dead and Breakfast by Kate Kingsbury is the first book in the Merry Ghost Inn Mystery series.  Melanie and her grandmother Liza are opening a bed and breakfast in a reportedly haunted mansion on the Oregon coast.  While renovating the pair stumble across a long dead body.  The small police force puts the cold case on the back burner.  If the B&B is ever to open, Melanie and Liza must solve the mystery themselves.  This is a great start to a new series.  I loved the ghost story aspect.  Liza and Melanie are wonderful characters.  I look forward to finding out how the bed and breakfast setting develops as the series progresses.

Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli's She Stopped for Death is the second book in the Little Library Mystery series.  Jenny and her mother, Dora, are receiving nighttime visits from the town's reclusive poet, Emily Sutton.  Soon Emily drags Jenny, Dora, and their next door neighbor Zoe into her peculiar life. I have mixed feelings about this book.  The first half was a struggle to get through.  The characters, especially Jenny, are weak.  I am not a fan of women who cannot survive without a boyfriend.  The mystery only took center stage in the second half of the book.  The mystery was good and did help to redeem the book.  At this point I am on the fence about the book.   I would hope to see further character development in future books.  A book with all female leads needs to have strong female leads.

disclosure:  I received these e-books from NetGalley but was not otherwise compensated for these reviews.  All opinions are my own!

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