Sunday, February 2, 2020

Weekend Book Reviews

Late Checkout by Carol J Perry is the ninth booth in the Witch City Mystery series.  Lee has her hours cut at her local television reporting job.  She uses the extra time to volunteer at the local library with her Aunt Libby.  While shelving books, Lee discovers more than she bargained for - a dead body.  The recent death soon leads her to digging into the past as mysteries overlap.  I enjoy this series.  The characters mesh well together, and Lee is a likable heroine.  The mystery was strong and kept me guessing back and forth until the end.

The first book in the Cat Cooper Mystery series by Victoria Laurie is Coached to Death.  Apparently Cat is the main character from another series which I have not read.  Perhaps that made this particular book hard for me to get into.  Cat is divorced and living in the Hamptons where she has decided to become a life coach.  Things are going okay except in regards to her neighbor Heather who dislikes Cat.  After a particularly bad encounter with Heather who winds up dead, Cat is the only suspect.  She and her best friend Gilley are determined to prove her innocence.  I really, really wanted to like this book.  I even overlooked the snide shots at people with religious convictions.  In the end the problem was Cat.  In her previous life she was supposedly a very successful business owner.  In this book she whines and throws temper tantrums (hissy fits for those in the south) that would make a toddler jealous.  Heather was fa from perfect, but no one should ever be rooting for the main character to wind up in jail!

Have Yourself a Beary Little Murder by Meg Macy is the third book in the Teddy Bear Mystery series.  Sasha is thrilled that her family's store, Silver Bear Shop and Factory, won the Teddy Bear Keepsake Contest.  Now in addition to all of the other holiday busyness, they are producing the specialty bear.  Sasha finds herself in the middle of another mystery when the man in the Santa Bear costume, the town's mayor, is found dead. This is a nice holiday themed cozy with plenty of things happening.  The mystery was not the strongest, but I enjoy the setting and characters of this series.

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

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