Book 100-101
Snow Place for Murder by Diane Kelly
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Returning to Misty's mountain lodge was a nice stay. This mystery worked well for me. Misty is playing hostess to Nigel Goodwin and his investors. He's looking to turn some nearby land into a mega-resort complete with waterpark. Not everyone is thrilled including a local real estate person, a wildlife rehabber and avid hunter/gun nut/anger control issue dude. Even Nigel's investors don't all seem happy, like the pro hockey player there more for the free vacation than anything else.
Hoping she hasn't made an error in allowing them to book out her lodge, Misty tries to keep in the upcoming Christmas spirit with her new boyfriend and handyman Rocky and her two sons home from school and ditto Rocky's daughter.
When Nigel turns up under the sledding hill, frozen to death, the local sheriff asks for Misty's cooperation in solving the case. I like that they're friends (because adversarial law enforcement is a deal breaker for me in cozy mysteries) . Misty's involvement in this doesn't feel like overreach nor does she go around assuming people owe her explanations (because how many times have we seen that in cozies?)
I thought the red herrings were sprinkled in well and I liked the ending. Misty is a fun character as is Rocky. It's a nice setting and I enjoyed the mystery. Thank you to the publisher for making an arc available to me via Netgalley.
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Half Bad by Sally Green
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was a 2.5 read for me. A friend picked up a freebie for me not knowing it was book 2 so I got this one because this is definitely a trilogy you need to start at the beginning. And...it's a bit of a hot mess in many ways. It opens in 2nd person pov (which I hate) and switches back and forth between that and first person until half way in before becoming Nathan's pov in first (both are his pov technically)
It opens with him in a cage being tormented by a White Witch because he's half white and half black (and boy do I hate this sticking with the white = good, black = bad, yes I know it's been around as a convention forever but we should try harder at this point). There is some brutal violence in all of this which i'm okay with that.
What I could have done without was the predictability of it (who would have guessed the purest white witch of them all would sort of fall for him and cause him to be tormented by her family, wow never saw that before...100 times over) It moves on such predictable rails you'd think it was a train.
Also the whole first 'book' I could have done without as well because we start with the high energy scene of Nathan's attempt escape and then boom we're back watching him grow up to this point. And it slows to a crawl as we watch over the years the White Witches making further and further restrictions on the half codes as they call them (Black/White witches or witch/fain which is their term for non-magical humans).
The whole plot which is razor thin is by 17 every witch must get three gifts and drink the blood of a relative (just a mouthful it seems) to get their power (or maybe die without it). In Nathan's case his mother is dead and his Black Witch father is gone and that is Nathan's end all be all: Meet my dad.
WHY? That was my biggest issue with this. We never see any real motivator for this. Nathan is fully aware his father is a mass murderer. He killed Nathan's half siblings' father and is the reason Nathan's mother is dead as well. For me 'he's my dad' isn't enough. I'd like to think a lot of us wouldn't want to see a mass murderer we've never met even if he is our dad. Maybe if Nathan's home life had sucked. His sister Jessica is a bitch to him and wants him gone. Maybe if they had all been that way I could see it more. His gran is decent to him. His brother Arran loves him.
So the whole book is him wishing for daddy and being picked on by White Witches which was problem number two for me. When the 'good guys' are as cruel and gross as the bad ones, you're left with no one to root for and Nathan makes half his own problems.
It 'ends' with barely any resolution to anything other will he survive his 17th birthday. In fact, it pretty much just fizzles out mid action and I hate that kind of ending. Now I need to decide do I even want to read the book my friend gave me?
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