The Pumpkin Spice Café

What started out as a pleasant cozy (very light) mystery turned very spicy at the end and it was a not unpleasant turn of events.

Jeanie's aunt retires and leaves Jeanie the Pumpkin Spice Café in Dream Harbor and Jeanie moves into the little apartment above the café and begins to make herself at home in the small New England town. But with all of the ruckus every night in the alley behind the café, Jeannie can't sleep and when she catches the hunky town farmer making a deliver and assumes he is trying to break in, she starts an unassuming friendship and they are both infatuated with each other. And harboring doubts on their own.

The characters in the quaint town are adorable and funny! And gossips!! Whooo wee does news get around there! And with a bit of mystery thrown in as far as who might be sabotaging the Cafe and trying to force Jeanie out of her place. This is more of a rom-com and quite a lovely book!

Five stars!

Dead Tired

 *I received a free copy of this novel from NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, and Minotaur Books for my honest review.*

I was so happy to get back to Alice and her other mom friends in this series. The mums are all tired and running ragged trying to do all that they can with the babies. And they happen upon a nude protester photo shoot and then they are invited to a sit in to protect a local area from being torn down, of course they show up to be chained to the trees to protect the eco system. And they wake up to a murdered protester.

I feel like reading about the group of mums making their way around with the babies while they investigate is way more interesting than the actual investigation. Alice is still a mess in every sense of the word and Jack and Helen are just along for the ride. The plotting is great and the characters are funny and so believable with all the quirks that have made this series one of my favorites.

I am here for the ride with Alice and her friends and whatever they find themselves in! Five stars!

the Serial Killer's Guide to San Francisco

 

*I received a free copy of this novel from NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, and Minotaur Books for my honest review.*

Capri (emphasis on the PRI) is a strong willed woman who started a tour company in San Francisco 10 years ago when her marriage fell apart. As the granddaughter of the infamous Overkill Bill serial killer, she emphasizes serial killers and murders in her tours and the company has become quite successful. Then a murder happens and the cops are calling it a copycat of Overkill Bill who has always maintained his innocence and Capri's ex-MIL goes missing and she is the person that the family turns to for help.

I loved that Capri was such a strong character and didn't kowtow to anyone, including the hot detective. (Because, of course, there is a hot detective!) And she even stood up to her own dad about looking into the original Overkill Bill murders to try and find out if her grandfather really was innocent. Adding in several other characters that help with the tour company and her graduate school attending daughter, there is a great cast of characters to build on for any future books in the series!  A single POV and snippets of San Francisco tourist locations and this made for a great debut!

Four stars!

The Maid

 

Another novel about a neurodivergent main character. Five stars from me again!

Poor naive, unassuming Molly the maid works in the Regency Grand Hotel in a big city and is one of the best maids due to her attention to detail and ability to follow all of the rules to the letter. She is definitely unique and on the spectrum in some capacity. But she is also so easy to like in her quaint ways and way of talk. When Molly finds a body in a room she is about to clean, she does what she can to help her friends who might be affected by the murder. 

Such a sweet reminder in the book to be careful of your friends and know your enemies. But when you can't tell which is which, it makes it mighty hard to survive. And Molly is on a bit of a down ward spiral after losing her Gran several months ago. Gran helped her find her way. But she still has Gran in her mind and in her heart and with her Gran as her guide through life, Molly just might make it after all.

This was such an endearing novel (minus the death and mystery) and Molly is such a strange bird in a great way that it is easy to root for her to figure things out. It's also kind of easy to sort out what is going on even when Molly doesn't.

I can't wait to read the next in the series!

Lenny Marks Gets Away with Murder

*I received a free copy of this novel from NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for my honest review.*

I can't believe that I put this book off as long as I did. What a fantastic debut novel for Karryn Mayne and I am adding her to my authors to follow on Goodreads. And recommending this book to everyone!

On the surface, Lenny Marks is set in her ways and one could assume it is due to being on a spectrum of some sort. That is certainly what I thought for most of the novel. Her schedule is never changing - grocery store, food, work - every week it is all the same thing. Until she realizes that she is lonely, admits it to her mum, and her mum starts pushing her to make friends at work and to engage. And when a letter from the parole board is delivered to her at work, it starts a spiral of changes that Lenny can't stop.

Lenny's quirkiness with her anagrams to calm herself sometimes had me thinking - "wait... can you really make that word?" And the answer was always yes!

The novel was a great pace and with a bit of a mystery behind the parole board letter. and it works to dismantle Lenny's world piece by piece until she is precariously close to collapse. The characters are fantastic and Lenny's loneliness is palpable. Her actions to try and make friends and adjust to the outside world are enough to bring her (and me) back to being alone in her home and disregarding every chance to change her life.

I want to say that I hope I can read more about Lenny Marks, but in order for that to happen she needs another mystery and I would very much rather for her to live her life in the peace that she finds!

Five stars!! A must read!