The Wedding Plot (Mercy Carr, #4) by Paula Munier – Review

Tags

5 stars, Book Review, contemporary, dogs, mystery, Paula Munier, romance, series

Review of The Wedding Plot

The Mercy Carr series is one of my favorites in contemporary mystery.  It features former Army MP Mercy Carr and her retired bomb-sniffing dog Elvis. They have retreated to beautiful Vermont’s Green Mountains to heal their invisible wounds after the death of Martinez, Elvis’s handler and Mercy’s fiancé.  When U.S. Game Warden Troy Warner and his canine search-and-rescue partner Susie Bear meet Mercy and Elvis, the four form a partnership as they solve mysteries in Vermont while quoting Shakespeare.

The Wedding Plot is book four in the series.  You can read it as a standalone.  But I was glad to know the background of these characters going into this mystery.  Why?  Because there are soooo many characters.  Blame it on the wedding, I guess.  Remembering who is who proved to be a challenge.  That is my only complaint though.

The complex plot is packed with twists and turns which leads to much guessing about who the bad guys or gals are.  Favorite characters from the series each played substantial roles, not content with being relegated to the background.   And the dogs are always in the thick of things, uncovering bodies, evidence, and untrustworthy individuals while they zero in on all the dog lovers at the wedding.  I admit, the dogs are why I read this series.  Trust a good dog to sniff out villainy while helping us find the best in people.

The wedding background inspired the author to start each chapter with a quote about love. It also had Mercy’s family hinting that she and Troy might be ready to get married themselves.  I have enjoyed watching Mercy and Troy get to know each other while they navigated their own personal demons.  Maybe, the time is just right for them?!

Through NetGalley, the publisher provided a copy of this book.  My review is my honest opinion.

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About The Wedding Plot by Paula Munier

Love never dies a natural death…

When Mercy’s grandmother Patience marries her longtime beau Claude Renault at the five-star Lady’s Slipper Inn, it promises to be the destination wedding of the year. Just as the four-day extravaganza is due to begin, the inn’s spa director Bodhi St. George disappears—and Mercy’s mother Grace sends Mercy and Elvis to find him. But what they discover instead is a stranger skewered by a pitchfork in the barn on the goat farm where St. George lived.

As Mercy tries to figure out who the victim is and where St. George is hiding, the bride and groom’s estranged relations gather for the first of the pre-wedding festivities. Long-buried rivalries and resentments surface—and Mercy realizes that they’re all keeping secrets that could tear both families apart. When Elvis interrupts the escalating melodrama to alert Mercy to an intruder on the estate, she finds a wounded St. George in the cottage where she and Troy are staying. St. George is not who he says he is—but when he escapes from the hospital and disappears again, Mercy thinks he’s gone for good. With the wedding imminent and the families at each other’s throats, she decides finding St. George will have to wait.

The big day arrives—but the danger is far from over. With the families and the festivities still under threat, it’s up to Mercy and Elvis together with Troy and Susie Bear to stop the killer and save the bride and groom—before death do they part.

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A Lullaby for Witches by Hester Fox – Review

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4 stars, Book Review, contemporary, Hester Fox, historical, paranormal, romance, Susanna Kearsley, witches

Review of A Lullaby for Witches

Current day – Augusta is a 20-something museum studies graduate who lands her dream job as a museum collection manager in a the historical Harlowe home.  Her relationship with her boyfriend is less than ideal, but Augusta is the type of woman who blames herself and doesn’t think she should expect better.

1876 – Margaret is the only girl in the wealthy Harlowe family.  She doesn’t quite fit in, so she charts her own path, developing her own not-quite-natural abilities.  But it is 1876.  Woman are expected to live a certain way and deviation from that can lead to terrible consequences.

The lives of these two women, centuries apart, intersect when Augusta starts working in the house that Margaret once lived in.  Ghost or witch – Margaret pulls Augusta into her past, because she wants something from Augusta.  Augusta becomes interested in the life of one who’s story was lost because she was a woman. 

The Kearsley-esque dual story line gives both the historical and present-day view of women.  As their lives intertwine, history unfolds.  Both Margaret and Augusta have man problems.  The difference is Margaret and her lover are dead (or so it would seem) but the reader hopes that Augusta can still do better.  

Augusta is young enough to lack a certain maturity I like in my heroines, but younger readers will appreciate her struggles.  Even Margaret garners a little sympathy as a 19^th century woman facing a rigid society.  The museum setting was perfect for telling the story of two women who lived 150 years apart.  This contemporary, historical, paranormal tale has a little bit of romance and a little bit of mystery.  The verdict – A Lullaby for Witches is perfect for fans of Susanna Kearsley who are looking for a less complex story, but appreciate a well-crafted tale.

Through Netgalley, the publisher provided a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

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About A Lullaby for Witches by Hester Fox

Once there was a young woman from a well-to-do New England family who never quite fit with the drawing rooms and parlors of her kin.

Called instead to the tangled woods and wild cliffs surrounding her family’s estate, Margaret Harlowe grew both stranger and more beautiful as she cultivated her uncanny power. Soon, whispers of “witch” dogged her footsteps, and Margaret’s power began to wind itself with the tendrils of something darker.

One hundred and fifty years later, Augusta Podos takes a dream job at Harlowe House, the historic home of a wealthy New England family that has been turned into a small museum in Tynemouth, Massachusetts. When Augusta stumbles across an oblique reference to a daughter of the Harlowes who has nearly been expunged from the historical record, the mystery is too intriguing to ignore.

But as she digs deeper, something sinister unfurls from its sleep, a dark power that binds one woman to the other across lines of blood and time. If Augusta can’t resist its allure, everything she knows and loves—including her very life—could be lost forever.

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Quiet in Her Bones by Nalini Singh – Review

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5 stars, Book Review, contemporary, Nalini Singh, New Zealand, suspense

About Quiet in Her Bones by Nalini Singh

My mother vanished ten years ago.
So did a quarter of a million dollars in cash.
Thief. Bitch. Criminal.
Now, she’s back.
Her bones clothed in scarlet silk.

When socialite Nina Rai disappeared without a trace, everyone wrote it off as another trophy wife tired of her wealthy husband. But now her bones have turned up in the shadowed green of the forest that surrounds her elite neighborhood, a haven of privilege and secrets that’s housed the same influential families for decades.

The rich live here, along with those whose job it is to make their lives easier. And somebody knows what happened to Nina one rainy night ten years ago. Her son Aarav heard a chilling scream that night, and he’s determined to uncover the ugly truth that lives beneath the moneyed elegance…but  no one is ready for the murderous secrets about to crawl out of the dark.

Even the dead aren’t allowed to break the rules in this cul-de-sac.

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Review of Quiet in Her Bones

Aarav is the unreliable narrator of this tale.  His remembrance of his past, recent past and long ago past (10 years ago), is marked by unexpected memories clouded by personal relationships.  The fact that he seems to be taking a variety of prescription drugs (and doesn’t always remember taking them) also adds to possible memory impairment.

Typically, not my favorite type of narrator, I decide to withhold judgement on this untrustworthy storyteller until I had more facts.  Because this is a book by Nalini Singh.

The facts came.  Bit by bit.  Not in any particular type of order unless you count misorder as a type.  The back and forth timeline was as untidy as Aarav’s mind.  When you add the questionable memories of Aarav, there were times, when I wondered if I had really read what I thought I had read.  The psychological ambiguity is what keeps the reader from coming up with a definitive answer until….well, until the answer is presented by the author.

I could not decide whether Aarav was a good guy or bad guy.  His dad is a controlling misogynist and mom is/was both a loving mom and selfish.  Based on this, how is a boy supposed to grow up?  As personalities go, Aarav is not the person I want to hang out with, but he does have a moral center.  (Thankfully.)  Plus, he has a little sister to protect, so that also adds to the good-guy-ness.

There will be a point in the book when the reader learns why the narrator is so unreliable.  Until that time, and even after, anything can happen. Anybody can be the killer.

Through Netgalley, the publisher provided a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

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