Killer Chardonnay

Title: Killer Chardonnay
Author: Kate Lansing
Published: May 26th 2020 by Berkley Books
Format: eBook, 304 pages
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Source: My thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for an opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book.
Series: A Colorado Wine Mystery #1

Be prepared to read this book start to finish since Kate Lansing is expertly introducing the reader to a new town, new people, and an interesting education on wines and food pairings.

Parker Valentine has worked hard for this day, the day her dreams come true and the doors of Vino Valentine, a wine tasting room in Boulder, Colorado has opened. What she didn’t anticipate was much-despised food and wine critic Gaskel Brown dying after his first taste of her Chardonnay. Now with the speed of social media, and a trending hashtag, Parker needs to find the real killer before she must shut her doors for good.

Throughout this book, quite a few characters, love interests, and scenarios are thrown at the reader as Parker puts the pieces together, and if you are paying close attention, you might find the clue that has you tapping your chin and saying ‘aha”, but not to worry if you missed it since you gladly go where she is leading and each character does sound more interesting, and plausible, than the last.

The Book of Lost Friends

Title: The Book of Lost Friends
Author: Lisa Wingate
Published: April 7th 2020 by Ballantine Books
Format: eBook, 400 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Source: My thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for an opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book.

Picking up this book to get a little taste resulted in not putting it down, except when I had to, for two days. Not usually being a fan of current day/flashback fragmented narratives, the stories of freed slave Hannie Gossett (1875) and Benny Silva (1987), had me captivated from the beginning.

Benny Silva arrives in rural Augustine, Louisiana to begin teaching at a school where the last thing anyone wants, including the administration, is to spend any time or money teaching the kids who couldn’t make it into the better school down the road. Wanting to learn more about her new home, and the cemetery across the road, Benny enlists a local woman to come to her class and tell the stories of the women that had come before them and created what no one thought they could.

Hannie Gossett, after being freed, remained on Goswood Grove as a sharecropper. All she has left of her family is a necklace with three blue beads and a hope she will one day be able to bring her family together again.

In a wandering tale, highlighted by the “Lost Friends” advertisements, published in Southern newspapers during the post-Civil War years, which helped newly freed slaves search for loved ones, Hannie and two daughters of the family that once owned her, set out to find the missing patriarch of Gosswood Grove. In doing so, they set a narrative in motion that is not fully revealed until Benny and her students start a much-maligned school project which ties the women of 1875 with her students today.

What I took from this book was an arduous struggle to bring family and community together. A tale of hard-fought freedoms and an understanding of how the past is never really the past and how we owe a debt of gratitude to all who have come before us and what they had to endure to tell their never to be forgotten stories.

Murder in the Storybook Cottage

Title: Murder in the Storybook Cottage
Author: Ellery Adams
Published: April 28th 2020 by Kensington Books
Format: eBook, 320 Pages
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Source: My thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for an opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book.
Series: Book Retreat Mysteries #6

If it wasn’t for all the murders that surround Storyton Hall, in the mountains of Virginia, I would assume this to be the perfect book-cation. That place you want to escape to for some downtime with no electronics and no demands. Unfortunately, death and escapades seem to be on the daily menu along with monthly events and delectable themed meals. This month, Jane Steward and the Fins, are hosting children’s book publisher Peppermint Press in addition to families needing a getaway.

Jane has a new attraction for her guests. A set of cottages with fairy tale themes where the children can dress up and craft their way through a day of dreams and fantasy. What Jane didn’t anticipate was a dead woman, dressed as Little Red Riding Hood to spoil the opening day carrying a valuable copy of Grimms’ Fairy Tales in her basket. If this were a one and done, that would be one thing, but quick on the heels of the first is a second which has Jane giving side-eye to some not so nice guests and wondering what, and who is behind the deaths.

Ellery Adams does a good job in distracting the reader. Like any good scavenger hunt, there are clues sprinkled around and interesting characters to meet. By the end, though not a happily ever after for all involved, does lead to a happy ending for two couples that the reader has been cheering along.

The Diva Spices It Up

Title: The Diva Spices It Up
Author: Krista Davis
Published: April 28th 2020 by Kensington Books
Format: eBook, 352 pages
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Source: My thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for an opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book.
Series: Domestic Diva #13

This series is beginning to lose its appeal. Just your usual straight to the end with no bumps in the road, whereby the middle of the book, the reader had it all figured out, and the espionage which Krista Davis tried to plant was neither a bonus nor important to the storyline.

With Sophie being in-between jobs, her ex-husband Mars offers an interesting proposal - why not take on the job of ghostwriting a cookbook. How hard could it be he asks. He just so happens to know of an up and coming homemaking personality, who just so happens to be the wife of one of his clients. What he didn’t tell her was that the last ghostwriter walked off the job with no notice. Not good. But what they both find out later is even worse.

With a half-written manuscript and odd notes in the margin, Sophie jumps in only to discover there is more going on in Old Towne, Virginia than meets the eye. It also appears spies are running amok, a missing child may have been found, Natasha’s half-sister has made an appearance, and a bathroom falling into disrepair only adds to the stress of a looming deadline. It is now up to Sophie and her band of neighbors and friends to figure out why people are dying and only then will their little community return to its quiet self.

Krista Davis throws some odd things into the book which didn’t add to the story and only appeared as distractions. Multiple storylines are good and can add greatly to the overall narrative, but she went a bit far afield. I wish she would get back to where the books began and even bring back the haunted aspect that was once mentioned in regards to a picture hanging in the house.

Stone Cross

Title: Stone Cross
Author: Marc Cameron
Published:April 1st 2020 by Kensington Books
Format: eBook 448 pages
Genre: Suspense
Source: My thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for an opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book.
Series: Arliss Cutter #2

Arliss Cutter is everyman’s Leroy Jethro Gibbs of Alaska. Raised by a man who has the same numbered rules Gibbs bestows on his underlings, Arliss bestows this knowledge on his nephews, and sister-in-law, as he helps her to raise the children of his late brother.

Arliss and partner Lola Teariki, both members of the Alaska Fugitive Task Force, are assigned as bodyguards to a federal judge who must hear testimony in a remote Alaskan village. Before their arrival, a couple and their handyman have been murdered and with Arliss, there is never just one job that needs to be done. They now must split their time, and resources, between capturing a killer and keeping a judge from harm's way. With the judge ready to encounter a hostile crowd and an additional threat amongst the throng, Arliss and Lola need to tread lightly before they spook the wrong adversary and allow a killer to get away with murder.

The reader is pulled back and forth between multiple narratives, multiple characters, and multiple outcomes. Yet Marc Cameron does a stellar job in giving each their voice and their place within the story.