A Simple Favor

A Simple Favor by Darcy Bell

So first of all:

***Spoiler Alert***

So I watched the movie and didn’t like it-however I was intrigued by how Stephanie Smothers solved the mystery and how she was like this fluffy woman who solved this mystery and went on to solve others, a total contrasts.

Hmmm…?

So I decided to check out the book and I HATED IT! I found it to be so awful and it dragged on and on and on.

I wanted more info on the characters as I felt as there was a lot of background missing in the film, but the book…the book…it was just awful.

I’m so disappointed.

All these people are horrible…just horrible.

Bleh…

Stephanie is a stay at home mom and mommy blogger. She is a widow who’s brother and husband died in a car accident. She’s too perfect…so much so that a lot of people can’t stand her-too annoying-but one day her son Miles wants to play with his classmate Nicky and she becomes friends with Nicky’s mother Emily.

Emily Nelson works in the city as P.R. agent for a famous  fashion designer. She seems so cool Stephanie falls under her spell and often has the boys and they do things together.

One day Emily asks her to pick up Nicky as she is running late and have him stay the night, but Emily doesn’t come back.

Stephanie works hard trying to find Emily, but when they discover a body that matches her DNA, she comes to accept that Emily is gone.

She helps take care of Nicky and she and his father Sean Townsend grow extremely close and they fall for each other, moving in together.

Not a good idea…

But then Nicky says he sees his mom and she promised to come back, and a few other things start happening-and Stephanie starts to wonder if Emily is really dead. She starts investigating.

On the case!

Thoughts After Reading:

I hated this book!

Stephanie is annoying and all the stuff she shares on her blog-I’m surprised she hasn’t been murdered or her son kidnapped as she has no privacy. Her backstory of incest with her half brother because he is hot and looks just like her father- uber creepy and I don’t know why the author had to add that in or try to make their love “romantic”.

Then Sean is a major jerk who just jerks around poor Stephanie who really believes he loves her. What a loser!

And Emily is he worst of all. Kills her sister to “fake her death” and get the insurance money, plotted all this because she is tired of their life and wants “money” (they make a TON of money), and leaves her poor son.

I hated this, every page-ugh. And it felt like the author wanted to be like Gone Girl and copied it but threw in incest and other issues.

For more disappearances, go to The Strength of Their Attachment

For more mysteries, go to The Satapur Moonstone

The Cradle Will Fall

The Cradle Will Fall by Mary Higgins Clark

Katie Callahan DeMaio is a widowed county prosecutor. Katie has a rare condition in she loses too much blood on her period, causing lightheadedness, blackouts, etc. One day she is driving home from work and this causes her to crash.

But she survives. However, she and her sister decide its time to take care of it. They plan to do an operation when she has recovered a bit, her becoming a patient of the Dr. Edgar Highly. She is given medication, but doesn’t take all of it and awakes in the middle of the night-seeing a man move a dead body?

Meanwhile, celebrated physician and miracle birth, Dr. Edgar Highly, is facing a very large problem. One of his patients is unhappy with his care and going to go to her former physician. He has to take care of her quick, or else his experiment will be uncovered.

Dr, Highly kills her in his office and prepares to take her dead body to her house…but did someone spot him in the window?

Hmm…

Katie hears of the suicide and starts investigating, will she uncover the truth or be the next victim?

Thoughts After Reading:

I LOVE this book!!!

I can read it over and over and each time it gets me. It is a fantastic book, one of Clark’s best!

For more by Mary Higgins Clark, go to We’ll Meet Again

For more mysteries go to Lowcountry Bordello

And Only to Deceive

So every year in December leading up to Christmas I try and post a Christmas mystery. This year I had a really difficult time and had to go out on a bit of a limb. This book isn’t a “Christmas Mystery” but Christmas does play a role so it counts.

And Only to Deceive (Lady Emily Mystery #1) by Tasha Alexander

Lady Emily is a widow.

But she isn’t sad as she never loved her husband.

Lady Emily Ashton is an only daughter and all her life her mother has been plotting and planning and maneuvering to get her daughter married off to a wealthy and eligible bachelor.

Emily chose Viscount Phillip Ashton as he seemed less chauvinistic and someone who would be okay to live with-and  of course by marrying she would be free of her mother.

Phillip was interested in the hunt, captured his quarry, and then went on a big game hunt to Africa were he became sick and died.

Emily was given freedom, money, large houses-she had to be absent from society for two years but that was okay as she didn’t really care for it. Life was solitary but it wasn’t bad.

Everything changed when her husband’s best friend came to visit after a year and a half. Mr Colin Hargreaves came to speak to Emily about how he made sure her Greek Villa was all in order, and she is free to go there anytime, just let him know and he will arrange the trip for her, Kallista.

Emily is completely surprised as her husband never said any thing about a villa and he never called her Kallista.

Emily is baffled by this and even more when her butler let’s her know that he fired a footman who was digging in her late husband’s desk. She starts looking to see if anything is missing,-although how would she know as she has never been in there really-and discovers a threatening note.

This is just the firsts in a series that makes Emily realize she knew very little, if anything about her husband. It turns out that he was an avid collector or Greek art-throughly knowledgeable in it and Greek history.

Hmm…

She also finds his journals and reads about his love for her (in incredibly sweet journal entries).

Emily’s interest is piqued and she begins reading Homer’s The Odyssey and researching into Greek art and mythology.

She discovers more things do not add up and that her husband was caught up in a fake antiquary scam. Could it be that he was duped, with all his knowledge and expertise? Or was he the ringleader?

Emily cannot believe the later, and as she reads her husband’s journals, she starts to fall in love with him, and remember wonderful and romantic gestures he would do, but took for granted at the time.

Emily isn’t sure who to trust, besides her old friend Ivy and new friend Lady Cécile du Lac. Colin spends a lot of time around her, and then she discovers that he has been watching her. Why? Could he be the ringleader?

Hmm…

She also meets another friend of her husband, Andrew Palmer, who is fun, light, sarcastic, and likes to party and go out. He gives Emily a lot of attention and she enjoys it, as anyone who has been sent to the sidelines would. He is from noble stock, but has no money. Could he be after her wealth, or is he really interested in her.

Hmm…

Colin and Andrew were both on the hunting trip with her husband, could one of them have killed him?

Then Emily gets a note about her husband being alive! Is he a criminal hiding out? Or was he betrayed by a friend and in need?

Emily sets off on a trek to Africa, will she be happy with what she finds? Or is she heading into a trap?!

Thoughts After Reading:

I really enjoyed this mystery as I liked that Emily was an independent woman with a strong personality and ideas about what she wanted, but at the same time she was still a woman of her times. I hate when people write historical fiction and the people are too much a product of our time. It makes zero sense.

I can’t wait to read the next book in the series!

For more Christmas Mysteries, go to Mail Order Murder

For more historical fiction, go to The Secret Keeper

For more mysteries about widows, go to A Quiche Before Dying

A Quiche Before Dying

A Quiche Before Dying (A Jane Jeffry Mystery #3)

Thoughts Before Reading:

So it has been a while since we reviewed one of this mysteries. The story is of widowed mom, Jane Jeffry, getting caught up in a murder mystery and doing her best to take care of her family and solve it at the same time.

As you might have guessed, all the books in the series are reworking of famous films/literature. This one is based on the book or movie A Kiss Before Dying.

Plot Summery:

This summer it is just the girls as Jane’s youngest son, Todd, has gone off with his paternal grandparents (who hate Jane) to Disney World. Her oldest son was off with his best friend and best friend’s father on a tour of colleges.

Katie, Jane’s daughter, is staying home as she has a job as a lifeguard for the summer. The two are to be soon joined by Jane’s mother. Jane and her mother will be taking a memoir writing class, one that Jane is not looking forward to.

Jane’s mother and father worked in the state department and went all over the world, while Jane has had nothing of note in her life. In fact, Jane ends up writing a historical fiction suspense novel instead.

The only sour spot in this whole class is that Mrs. General Agnes Pryce will be one of the classmates. She is a rude boorish woman, and nobody likes her.

The class is run by romance writer Missy Harris and the other classmates are: Jane’s best friend and neighbor, Shelley; Grady Wells, mayor and president of a small company; Ruth Rogers and her newly found sister Naomi Smith; and Desiree Loftus, bohemian artist who’s gone all over the world.

Agnes is just as bad as everyone thought it would be in the class. She even forces them to attend a potluck at her bric-a-brac stuffed house. After the party-Agnes winds up dead! Poisoned!

Which member of the class is the murderer? And will they strike again?

Thoughts After Reading:

I didn’t like this.

Everything was given at the end really. Just nothing and then one giant reveal. I did not care for it at all. There was no chance to figure out the killer, no real clues, nothing.

Bleh…

For more Jane Jeffry Mysteries, go to A Farewell To Yarns

For more by Jill Churchill, go to Grime and Punishment

For more mysteries, go to A Willing Murder

The House on Foster Hill

The House on Foster Hill by Jaime Jo Wright

This story is told in twi different times, with two different points of view:

Present Time:

Kaine Prescott has lost her husband and has a stalker. She tried to get the police to investigate both more thoroughly, but both have come to dead ends.

After two years, she moved to Wisconsin and bought a house, sight unseen, in her late grandpa’s hometown.

As she fixes the house up, she discovers a dark history and secret surrounding it, connected to a long ago mystery. As Kaine continues investigating will she find the answers or succumb to a past and present killer?

Past:

Ivy Thorpe assists her father, the town doctor, in trying to exhume and discover what caused the death of the bodies the police find. The House on Foster Hill has always held bad memories for Ivy, but with the discovery of a dead woman’s body, a baby, and possible serial killer. Will Ivy outsmart the killer, or will she be the next in his deadly list.

Hmmm…

Thoughts After Reading:

It was good with great characters but the present day reveal was disappointing.

I expected more from the novel than the obvious and chunkily thrown in villain.

I really enjoyed how the author switched back and forth between the ’60s with Ivy and the present day with Kaine. This back and forth was extremely interesting, captured your attention, and made you want to find out what happened next.

For more serial killers, go to Real Murders

For more stalkers, go to Another Saturday Night and I Ain’t Got Nobody

A Farewell To Yarns

It’s beginning to look like out next holiday mystery!

A Farewell to Yarns (Jane Jeffry #2) by Jill Churchill

Thoughts Before Reading:

It has been a while since we have reviewed a Jane Jeffry book. Let’s give a little background. Jane Jeffry is a widow with two sons, one daughter, a dog, and a cat. She lives in suburbia as housewife…er housemom? I’m not sure what the correct term would be. Anyways, her husband was head of the family company and she receives enough that she doesn’t have to worry about work but can focus on her children. In the previous book she was caught up in mystery when her cleaning lady was killed…only to turn out that the murderer killed the wrong woman.

What?!

As you might have guessed, all the books in the series are reworking of famous films/literature. This one is of A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway.

Christmas is coming and Jane is extremely stressed out. Not only does she have to deal with the usual end of the year Christmas/Winter recitals and parties for her children, she is in charge of the Church Christmas Bazaar, and has to finish an afghan in only a few days.

She doesn’t need anything else to add to it, but what do you know? That’s life. It turns out Phyllis Wagner, Jane’s old friend, has finally decided to take her up on one of her halfhearted invitations to visit. Jane doesn’t really want her to visit but is stuck.

Ugh

Shelley drives her to pick Phyllis up from the airport, to give Jane time to knit her blanket, and she gets the shock of her life. Phyllis has arrived with her son! A son? When did she have a child?

It turns out that when Phyllis was in high school she ran off with a classmate and got married. The parents tracked them down and paid for an annulment, but Phyllis discovered afterwards that she was pregnant.

Her parents not wanting the child and Phyllis not believing she could take care of it, went to stay with an aunt, had the baby, and put it up for adoption. Afterwards she met Chet and married the much older, divorced father of two; them living in the same apartments as Jane and her husband.

Phyllis and Chet couldn’t have any children, and after a terrible near death experience, Phyllis revealed her secret. Chet searched for her son and found him, Bobby.

How sweet!

Bobby came to live on the island Chet set up as home and soon became a bad note in the symphony of their lives. Bobby is a major jerk, but Phyllis dotes in him and fulfills his every whim as she feels guilty for giving him up and sad about missing everything from his early life.

This is not good

Pretty soon Chet couldn’t stand another second with him and gave the ultimatum, him or Bobby. Phyllis choose Bobby and headed back to the States to visit Jane and find a place to live.

Jane is shocked about what has happened, and upset with Phyllis and Bobby. She happily leaves her home to go to Fiona Divine’s house, the widow of the famous and deceased singer Richie Divine, the one hosting the bazaar. Phyllis wants to come too and after they discuss details, Fiona relays that the house next door is for sale.

Phyllis is extremely interested and Fiona forces her second husband, Albert, to take Phyllis on a tour. By the time Jane and Phyllis head home; Phyllis is renting the house and in the process of buying it, has had one of Chet’s people purchase everything needed, and packed up all her belongings to send them to the house; vacating Jane’s home.

Yay!

Jane finds this unbelievable, but is thrilled to have the house back to the family only.

The next day, Jane receives a call from Fiona that the police are at Phyllis’ new home. Jane rushes right over and into her sometimes date/interested party Detective Mel VanDyne of the homicide division. Yes, it turns out that Phyllis was murdered.

All Jane wants to do is stay out of this, but finds herself caught up in the case. Will she figure out who the killer is before they strike again?

Thoughts After Reading:

I did not like this book at all.

Jane was horrible and cruel to her friend; making fun of her so much that it was a terrible read. Why did she hate her so much? The was never really revealed.

The mystery’s solution was so obvious as well. As soon as the character entered the picture and Phyllis gave her backstory it was so easy to figure out and boring!

I can’t believe that Grime and Punishment was so good, and this book was an incredible stinker. It does not bode well for the next book.

For more Jane Jeffry mysteries, go to Grime and Punishment

For more Christmas mysteries, go to The Undoing of Saint Silvanus

For more mystery reviews, go to The Lesson

The Winter People

The Winter People: A Novel by Jennifer McMahon

Thoughts before Reading:

I received this book in a contest, my only payment being an honest review.

Let me just start off and say that I found this to be a phenomenal book. Absolutely amazing. I started reading, intending to only start the novel, but found myself buzzing through it I just had to find out the end.

Plot Synopsis:

So the story is split between two different times. First we have Sara Harrison Shea from the turn of the century, living in West Hall, VA. Young Sara is raised by her father and Auntie, a healer, who teaches her things others, including the minister, would not approve of.

Everything changes one day when her husband goes hunting.

Since then West Hall has been a strange, spooky place.

Disappearances are common in the town, along with myths and legends.

The most mysterious being the tragic death of Sara Harrison Shea, who was found disturbingly dead just a few months after the death of her daughter.

Horrible!!!!

In present day; Ruthie and little Fawn live with their widowed mother Alice on a country farm. Much to Ruthie’s disgust and dislike, Alice has always forced them to live their lives off the grid, no internet, no connections, etc.

One morning Ruthie wakens to find her mother gone.

Just disappeared out of the blue, something her controlling and protective nature would never do.

As she searches for clues to where she might have gone to, Ruthie discovers Sara Harrison Shea’s secret diary.

Katherine has recently lost her husband when he died in a car accident.

Aw…

Already saddened over the death of her child, she is even more distraught to discover her husband had a secret.

He’d been coming to West Hall, VA for a while, but why? No one he knows is out here and why would he lie about it?

As she moves to West Hall to investigate, she discovers a connection between her husband, Alice, and Sara.

There are others who are after the diary Ruthie holds, and its great secret.

It was a great book.

Read it today!

Incredibly well written, superb storytelling, fantastic characters and incredible suspense. I just loved it.

I won’t say anymore because I don’t want to ruin it, but aw! So great!

For more supernatural mysteries, go to Grave Peril

For more on disapperances, go to Cookie Dough or Die

For more widows looking for answers, go to The Italian Wife

For more historical fiction mysteries, go to Ticker

For more not-in-a-series mysteries, go to Sleeping Beauty

The Italian Wife

The Italian Wife by Kate Furnivall

The year is 1922 and Isabella Berotti is a young, expectant mother living in Milan. She and her husband are visiting the outdoor markets when he is shot and killed. Isabella rushes over to help him, and is shot in the back, losing her baby and ability to walk.

Ten years later, Isabella has used all that frustration and grief to motivate her into walking, only suffering from a slight limp, and achieve her dream of becoming an architect. She is currently residing in Bellina, helping to achieve Mussolini’s dream of reclaiming the marshlands for Italy, and creating a modern state.

While life has been good, the day of the accident and death of her husband still haunts her. This anniversary she is spending her time reminiscing at a café, when a woman approaches her asking if she could watch her daughter Rosa. Before she can refuse, the woman whispers that “they” know who really killed Isabella’s husband and takes off. Intrigued as to what the woman may know, Isabella sits with Rosa, entertaining her. Everything is fine until Isabella sees the woman throw herself off a building Isabella created.

Now Isabella finds herself caught up in a web of political intrigue, as Rosa proves to be a powerful piece both the fascists and the rebels wish to use. She teams up with a photographer, Roberto Falco, to protect Rosa, remain out of prison, bring to light the dirty deals in government, and finally solve who murdered her husband.

Thoughts After Reading:

I absolutely loved this book.

I thought it was thrilling, interesting, and impossible to put down. The historical truths of Mussilini attempting to control and reshape the land, even going as far as building cities and farms in impossible places, was a fascinating backdrop and made me interested to learn even more.

The writing was extremely well done and the characters are multi-dimensional, lovable, and always exceeding my expectations as to what would happen next. In fact, I am not only looking forward to her next project, but planning on reading everything she has written prior to this novel.

I would give it five out of five stars.

For more stand alone mysteries, go to The Unsolvable Mystery: The Mystery of Edwin Drood

For more mysteries, go to The Silence of the Llamas

One for the Money

One for the Money (Cat Caliban Mystery #1) by D.B. Borton

So I found this book and thought it sounded good.

After Cat Caliban’s husband died, she decided to change her life.

She became a P.I, and bought an apartment house. Everything seems great.

But then a dead body is found in her building.

Looks like Cat has a case!

Thoughts after reading:

You guessed it, I was wrong.

Cat Caliban is the worst character I have ever read.

She is rude, cruel, and HATES everyone and everything.

She hates her kids, her friends, her husband, her tenants, gays, every ethnicity, EVERYTHING. Now if she was a cat, she’d be adorable.

But in this case, only her name is cat SO IT DOESN’T WORK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Having a character that hates everybody doesn’t make you like them, it just makes you hate them back.

She’s also THE WORST P.I. EVER. She doesn’t know how to shoot a gun, she doesn’t know how to solve crimes, she can’t do anything!

And I just couldn’t finish this horrid book.

For more books starring private investigators, go to The Missing Mah Jong Player

For more featuring a female P.I., go to Lane Changes

For more reviews, go to The Unsolvable Mystery: The Mystery of Edwin Drood

Grime and Punishment

Grime and Punishment (Jane Jeffry #1) by Jill Churchill

Thoughts Before Reading:

So the first book I read in this series was From Here to Paternity. I got it for free from the library and hated it (more on that later). For some strange reason I thought I would give the first book a go to see if it was good, and when I read it, I loved it!

As you might have guessed, all the books in the series are reworking of famous films/literature. This one is of Crime and Punishment.

The story is that widowed Jane Jeffry is doing a great job raising her kids. She has hidden from them the real reason dad was out that night when a car crashed into him, is there for her kids in carpooling, cooking, cleaning, supporting; but even supermoms need a little help.

She’s supported by her husbands life insurance and interests, letting her be a stay at home mom, and she can even afford a cleaning lady to come in. When her usual person retires, she and her best friend Shelley, the next-door-neighbor, manage to score the best cleaning lady in the neighborhood.

On the day of the new cleaning lady’s fist day, it is also one of Shelley’s legendary PTA parties. Fed up with people always bringing the same thing, no main courses, and at least one poorly done meal, she now assigns each mother a specific dish, one they can drop off early in the day so everything is ready to go at meeting time. Everyone is used to this and Shelley just leaves her door open as she trusts her neighbors and the cleaning lady will be there.

That day Jane stops by early to see Shelley, and finds out that their new cleaning lady called in sick. Replaced this morning by another cleaner, who from far away and behind, looks just like her.

Jane and Shelley visit, when Jane realizes she forgot to make her dish. She helps some other ladies drop off food, cleans up from the morning, runs around doing errands and finding ingredients. When she has everything completed, she goes to drop off the salad, happy to have made it under the wire. When she gets home she gets a call from Shelley. It turns out the cleaning lady is dead

The police come and start the investigation, one sexy detective paying Jane a lot of attention. In fact they all pay her a lot of attention, thinking she is highly suspect in the cleaning lady’s murder.

It soon is figured out that the murder meant to kill the original cleaning lady, Edith, rather than the replacement. It turns out Edith is very nosy, and her urge to snoop has netted her something big, and a death wish.

Jane is on the case to figure out who the killer is and clean up her neighborhood. Hopefully she can sweep up the answers before she is the next victim.

Thoughts After Reading:

In some ways it was very similar to Mrs. McGinty’s Dead, the cleaning woman is nosy and discovers a real tidbit, being murdered for it; but in other ways it is very enjoyable. I loved it so much I had a hard time putting it down, eager to discover which suburbanite is the murderer and what really happened the night Jane’s husband died.

I encourage you to read it as it was fantastic. Yes:

For more mystery reviews, go to A Stitch Before Dying