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matian101's review against another edition
1.0
I’m with the “could not finish” people. 100 pages in and I don’t care what the outcome is. It’ll have to remain a mystery.
eamrenner's review against another edition
5.0
Loved this book. It really helped me get out of my reading slump. Took a twist I didn’t expect.
rants_n_reads's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
slow-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
2.0
stephgraves's review against another edition
1.0
I put this down after about 100 pages, which is something I have only done maybe twice before. I honestly found it unreadable, and I quite enjoy a good cozy mystery. The writing was so broken up into paragraphs that the story had no flow, and the main character was so distracted that she annoyed the crap out of me--if the main character can't pay attention to the story, why should I?
sallyepp's review against another edition
2.0
Eh. I gave up. The impossible timing of the plot elements kept throwing me out of the story. Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood for this.
katherineep's review against another edition
1.0
I found this book to be a chaotic confusing mess. Many of the major plot elements happened off page and were only vaguely explained. I spent the entire book feeling like I needed to go back and reread parts of it to understand it better but didn't care enough to actually do it. It also bothered me that 2 major plot elements - the discovery of the book and the murder of the appraiser - happened well before the book actually happens and I never felt that the events were explained well enough. Will not read another in this series!
krisrid's review against another edition
2.0
This was my first read by this author, and while I enjoyed the story, I don't think that I would be likely to read others in this series.
Jacobia "Jake" Tiptree traded being a hot-shot money manager in New York, for a centuries old "fixer upper" house in the wilds of Maine. Along with her son, who's just out of rehab, her father, who spent years on the run because he was suspected of blowing up his wife and Jake's mother [he didn't], and a host of other "unique" small town folks, Jake is trying to live a nice quiet life, fixing her house up.
Unfortunately, when a pipe problem unearths what appears to be a centuries old book from her house's foundation, and when that book has in it a list of all the owners of the house - right up to and including Jacobia - and when that list is written in what turns out to be human blood, Jake sends to book to old book expert Horace Robotham for authentication and hopefully an explanation for how Jake's name could be in a book written a hundred years ago.
But then Horace gets murdered, the book disappears, and strange people start showing up in Jake's small Maine town asking questions and causing upset for the town's peace and quiet. So, Jake and her partner in crime, Ellie have to start investigating on their own, which leads to all manner of excitement, danger and confusion.
The murder mystery is alternated with bits and pieces of trivia about home repair and restoration, so if you are a home-repair person, this may be interesting to you. Since I live in an apartment and have never owned a house it wasn't that interesting to me.
The characters in the book were quirky, and added to the flavour of the story, but overall this was just an okay murder mystery for me. Not bad, just not great.
Jacobia "Jake" Tiptree traded being a hot-shot money manager in New York, for a centuries old "fixer upper" house in the wilds of Maine. Along with her son, who's just out of rehab, her father, who spent years on the run because he was suspected of blowing up his wife and Jake's mother [he didn't], and a host of other "unique" small town folks, Jake is trying to live a nice quiet life, fixing her house up.
Unfortunately, when a pipe problem unearths what appears to be a centuries old book from her house's foundation, and when that book has in it a list of all the owners of the house - right up to and including Jacobia - and when that list is written in what turns out to be human blood, Jake sends to book to old book expert Horace Robotham for authentication and hopefully an explanation for how Jake's name could be in a book written a hundred years ago.
But then Horace gets murdered, the book disappears, and strange people start showing up in Jake's small Maine town asking questions and causing upset for the town's peace and quiet. So, Jake and her partner in crime, Ellie have to start investigating on their own, which leads to all manner of excitement, danger and confusion.
The murder mystery is alternated with bits and pieces of trivia about home repair and restoration, so if you are a home-repair person, this may be interesting to you. Since I live in an apartment and have never owned a house it wasn't that interesting to me.
The characters in the book were quirky, and added to the flavour of the story, but overall this was just an okay murder mystery for me. Not bad, just not great.
agmaynard's review against another edition
1.0
1 1/2 stars. The 1/2 star because I could listen to it for 15-20 minutes and then fall back to sleep. Poorly written with alleged humor so ponderous it hits like a sledge hammer and an unnecessary eventual 5 corpses littering the landscape. Good only for times you can't pay much attention to a book because you're distressed (hospital waiting room, etc.)
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