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: Mother of the Bride Murder (A Lucy Stone Mystery, #29) by Leslie Meier

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book review mother of the bride murder lucy stone 29 leslie meier

Mother of the Bride Murder (A Lucy Stone Mystery, #29) by Leslie Meier opens with Lucy Stone, Phyllis, and a customer at the newspaper discussing children getting married.  Shortly thereafter, Lucy receives news from her eldest daughter, Elizabeth, that she is engaged and getting married in France.  Things go awry at the wedding and Lucy sticks her nose into the investigation making things much worse.

Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Books for approving my request to read an Advanced Readers Copy (ARC) of Mother of the Bride Murder by Leslie Meier.  I was thrilled when I learned I was approved as this has become one of my favorite book series.  I received this book for free in exchange for my honest review.

This latest installment in the series started off a bit slow for me, but eventually, the pacing picked up, and I ended up enjoying how the story ended.  I enjoyed the tidbits of French conversation as I took some French in high school and college, and I was easily able to translate what was being said.  Even if readers don't speak French, I think they'll be able to get the gist of what is being said.  I disliked some of the negative things said about the French culture . . . an example of this is when Lucy tried to retrieve a piece of mail that the postal worker had already picked up, she went on a diatribe about the Napoleonic Laws, how Napoleon was an awful person, and didn't understand why she couldn't have the letter back.

Something that took me by surprise was that Lucy's husband Bill and their adult son Toby didn't want to fly to France for the wedding.  This is hopefully something that is going to only happen once, so why would you want to miss such a monumental milestone in an immediate family member's life?  I've never really liked Bill, but this made me dislike the character even more, and it didn't make me like Toby very much either.  Yes, I know airplane tickets there are expensive, but they were getting free room and board all but one night as well as getting a family vacation out of it.

Unfortunately, Mother of the Bride Murder (A Lucy Stone Mystery, #29) by Leslie Meier was a bit of a let down for me, and I was so excited to read it.  I gave it three out of five stars.  There are going to be times where I just don't connect with a novel, and unfortunately, this was one of those times.  However, this will not deter me from continuing to read this series as I normally love the author's books.


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