impybelle's review against another edition
2.0
Mums had it home from the library and I ran out of books so I gave it a whirl. It starts out interestingly enough (Country star comes to town, our heroine schemes her way into becoming his personal chef while he's visiting) but the story never managed to gel for me. I didn't particularly care for anyone enough to want to keep reading after awhile, but I hate to start a book and not finish. I will say that I liked the answer to the whodunnit.
I just don't think you get to send two people to jail and then say something like, "Finally, all the pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fit." Um, no. You send your daughter's best friend straight to the police and the puzzle pieces should have been firmly soaked in superglue. (That detour/delay in the solving of the mystery was actually painfully not well thought out and fell apart the moment you looked at it.)
I just don't think you get to send two people to jail and then say something like, "Finally, all the pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fit." Um, no. You send your daughter's best friend straight to the police and the puzzle pieces should have been firmly soaked in superglue. (That detour/delay in the solving of the mystery was actually painfully not well thought out and fell apart the moment you looked at it.)
asanford's review against another edition
3.0
I liked this one better than the first one. It was entertaining, funny, and a good mystery.
chuckdolton's review against another edition
3.0
Ha Ha Didn't find out who the killer was till the end, so that was a good thing.
cheryl6of8's review against another edition
2.0
This only gets 2 stars because the who-actually-done-it-part kept me guessing. It was awful as far as characters and I needed to finish it to complete a category for a challenge -- that and my stubbornness are why I finished it.
I don't know the main character -- if she were more like her newspaper column, I might have grown to like her. She isn't and I didn't. But page 2 was too soon in the book for her to start doing eye-rolling-ly dumb stuff because I didn't care. And she didn't really improve. Her friends were uninteresting -- Liddy, obsessed with one diamond earring, and Mona, who doesn't know how many children she has or what seems to be the source of them. And the authors of this book clearly do not like country music, so they should not have made one of the primary stars of this book a country singer. I do like country music and I was insulted by all of the overdone cliches.
I kept complaining about this book as I read it and my family said it would be like a certain friend's husband and I would be stuck for life with it. I showed them. I finished it. No more country-fried rednecks for me!!
I don't know the main character -- if she were more like her newspaper column, I might have grown to like her. She isn't and I didn't. But page 2 was too soon in the book for her to start doing eye-rolling-ly dumb stuff because I didn't care. And she didn't really improve. Her friends were uninteresting -- Liddy, obsessed with one diamond earring, and Mona, who doesn't know how many children she has or what seems to be the source of them. And the authors of this book clearly do not like country music, so they should not have made one of the primary stars of this book a country singer. I do like country music and I was insulted by all of the overdone cliches.
I kept complaining about this book as I read it and my family said it would be like a certain friend's husband and I would be stuck for life with it. I showed them. I finished it. No more country-fried rednecks for me!!
bookswithangeli's review against another edition
lighthearted
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
daybreak1012's review against another edition
3.0
Kind of a goofy little cozy mystery series, if you want my honest take on it. The characters are a bit caricature-ish, but in an amusing way more than anything else. I think I'd classify this is as the "beach read" version of cozy mystery series: light, silly, humorous, not all that realistic...and that's ok. There's always a place for brain candy. Hayley Powell and her country musical idol and the case of his murdered crew member was a wild goose chase filled with red herrings and multiple motives and a decent "gotcha!" at the end. I definitely didn't see it coming right away, although, in retrospect, the clues weren't all that disguised. I'll be back again to see what shenanigans Hayley and the rest of her Bar Harbor friends and family manage to find themselves in.
starsaligned's review against another edition
4.0
I wasn’t as into this one as I was the first but somehow it was just as good for different reasons. The characters involved in this book didn’t have me as hooked but I think the character relationships is what really made it for me.
cozyreads1988's review against another edition
5.0
This was fantastic! Can’t wait to continue with the series.