Book Review: Death of a Tom Turkey (Hayley Powell Food and Cocktails Mystery, #18) by Lee Hollis

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Death of a Tom Turkey (Hayley Powell Food and Cocktails Mystery, #18)  by Lee Hollis  opens with Tom Farley and his neighbors in a snit because he's the last holdout to sell his house to a property developer who wants to build a resort. When Tom is shot at a pre-Thanksgiving community gathering and hospitalized, Hayley Powell puts her amateur sleuthing skills to good use. Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Publishers for providing me with an Advanced Readers Copy (ARC) of this cozy mystery. I received a copy of this book for free in exchange of my honest opinion and review of the story. I loved the fact that this latest installment of the Hayley Powell Food and Cocktails Mystery  series had a theme around the Thanksgiving holiday and included live turkeys in the plot. It was good to visit some familiar characters. Since this is the eighteenth installment in the series, Lee Hollis didn't go into much detail of the background of those reoccurring characters; however, she...
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Book Review: The Enigma of Room 622 by Joël Dicker

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The Enigma of Room 622 by book review of the enigma of room 622 joël dickerJoël Dicker is a Swiss book that has been translated into English for American audiences, and the expected publication date is September 13, 2022.  The book is about a writer who decides to vacation in the Swiss Alps and stays at the Palace of Verbier where a murder happened several years before and was covered up.  The author stumbles upon the crime and decides to uncover the truth behind room 622.

I'd like to thank NetGalley and HarperVia for the digital copy of the Advanced Readers Copy of The Enigma of Room 622 by Joël Dicker in exchange for my honest review.  I was excited to be selected to review this book ahead of its release in the United States.

Let me begin by saying I had high hopes for Joël Dicker's The Enigma of Room 622, but I found it to be a bit too convoluted and long for my taste.  It could have easily been shorter and still gotten the same point across.  There were times when the transitions between past and present felt a little off, and my interest in the storyline would wane.  Don't get me wrong though, I did enjoy the story quite a bit.

This novel seemed to be somewhat semi-autobiographical with the author using his recently deceased publisher in the story, and the main character is an author having trouble coming up with a storyline after the death of the publisher.  I'd be interested to see if anyone else felt the same way.

I also have to mention that there were quite a few words that I had to look up in a dictionary as I had never heard of those words used in common language, or for that matter, in any other books I've read.  These words included fecundity, anodyne, bis, and attenuating.  I'm all for using synonyms for words, but I don't particularly like it when a word that isn't commonly spoken is utilized when a different, more common word would have sufficed.

All in all, I enjoyed The Enigma of Room 622 by Joël Dicker and didn't see the end coming.  I gave this book three out of five stars and will definitely read some of the author's other works.

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