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Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Emmeline Duncan is the Portland, Oregon-based author of the Ground Rules Mystery Series, as well as YA novels written under the name Kelly Garrett. She is a 2020 Oregon Literary Fellow, a board member of the Northwest Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America, and co-organizer of the Friends of Mystery's Bloody Thursday lecture series. She's also a member of Sisters-In-Crime, Willamette Writers, and SCBWI. Visit her online at EmmelineDuncan.com, on Instagram and Facebook as @writeremmelineduncan, and on twitter as @duncanemmeline.
Review:
4.0 out of 5
80.00% of customers are satisfied
4.0 out of 5 stars Good start to a series
Just so's you know, I received a free copy of this book through a GoodReads giveaway. (But to the amusement of many but the surprise of none, I'd already purchased it on Kindle...)I'm a big fan of Duncan's coffee cart mystery series. So I had extremely high hopes for this book. And, don't get me wrong, I fully enjoyed the book. I wish Elyan Hollow were a real town; how fun is the idea of an entire town built around fictional spookiness? I also found most of the characters extemely engaging. The one drawback is that there were so many characters introduced, and it was hard to tell which ones I would need to pay the most attention to. Hopefully in future novels we'll see more of them, especially Bailey's grandfather and the people in his circle.The story revolves around the town's annual literature festival, held in Halloween-y fashion. An author who originated in the town but who has been actively avoiding coming back suddenly decided to attend the festival. Concurrent to that (and most likely not coincidentally) a ghost hunting show is filming in the town at the same time. The host is another former town resident. The two men are not close friends and the conflict seems to stem from there. Please notice I said "seems to" because that would be far too simple for a good cozy mystery. And this really is a good cozy mystery.Some cozies follow the Miss Marple school and have the protagonist sticking her (almost always a her) nose into an investigation because she's curious or a friend of hers might be involved or something like that. Here it's a perfectly organic flow. Bailey is the first suspect. She may not be top of the police's suspect list for long but here the detective plays it fairly close to his vest. So Bailey is left assuming she's still the prime suspect. She's going to investigate in order to clear her own name. Not only does she do that, but she learns a lot about herself and those around her in the process.I found this a very enjoyable book and look forward to the next one. If there is a next one. Fingers crossed.
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful! Great First in a Series!!
What an awesome story! More than anything, I wish I could move there & hang out with the village folks & celebrate year round with them!! Really looking forward to the next book!
3.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable cozy in need of serious editing
I liked the book and the characters. That’s why three stars. It as a nice little cozy that moved along well and had a strong cast of characters. Bailey, the main character, inherited a bookstore from her grandparents. Well, her grandmother as her grandfather is still alive and owns a percentage of the bookstore. The store is located in a Halloween-themed town in Oregon that is close to Portland with local stores and businesses hewing to the Halloween theme in the names of their businesses. Quirky, but cute. During a literary festival, the host of a ghost hunting show is killed in the local maze. The mystery moves along with Bailey serving as the voice of the story as she muses over what has happened. I do like that she didn’t immediately up and decide to solve the mystery herself. I also liked that the local police are competent. Too many cozies have used the device of suspicious or incompetent police and heroine, who runs her own business, somehow having tons of time to run around investigating. This does not happen here.So, the storyline and setting got the book 3 stars even though the book is in serious need of editing on multiple dimensions. Normally, I’d give a book with this level of copy errors a 2, but I’m upping that to a 3 just for the story. For lack of a better word, the book is technically sloppy. Lots of verb tense errors (“…one which was published last week and the other came out tomorrow…”) as well as poor word choice (“…two hand-chosen thrillers I had chosen…”), dangling ideas, and incomplete sentences (“While Lance was good at what he did, at least he usually was. He truly was talented on screen.“) There are also odd terms used that are not appropriate, even though they are slang, such as “I trespassed him” instead of “I had him charged with trespassing.” I see “trespassed someone” used a lot, but it’s clear those folks don’t know what that actually means (it actually implies imposition of oneself on someone else, usually physically, often sexually). Those are some key examples, but there are many more to be found in the book along with missing punctuation, missing/incorrect words, and confusing continuity. It really needs to be handed over to a good copy editor to fix.Overall, I did enjoy the book, but I’m not raving about it either. The copy errors were a distraction that frequently pulled me out of the story. I got my copy through my Kindle Unlimited subscription, so I’d probably read another one in the series if it was also KU. Would I buy the book? No, and if I had paid for the book, I would have returned it without finishing because of the editing issues.
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Chaos at the Lazy Bones Bookshop (A Halloween Bookshop Mystery)
BHD10697
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Product origin: United States
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