Genre: Mystery
Digital Book
ASIN #: B08C9DQJVV
Kensington Publishing
84 Pages
$2.99 Amazon
October 27, 2020
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Christmas is coming all too quickly for Harvest, Ohio's famous chocolatier, Bailey King. Thanks to her new cable TV show, her shop has more candy orders than she can handle this holiday season. Fortunately, her beloved Cousin Charlotte is happy to take the Candy Cane Exchange off Bailey's to-do list. After all, Charlotte has come to Harvest from her conservative home district to find her future outside of her family's influence. What better way than by taking on the Englisch task of pairing the sweet notes everyone is exchanging with a peppermint treat, just in time for Christmas Eve delivery? But when Charlotte discovers some of those delicious missives are for her, suddenly she's staking out the festive postbox, hoping to catch her secret admirer in his intriguing tracks...
When Charlotte sees something underhanded going on beneath the merrymaking, she enlists the help of Sheriff Deputy Luke Little to find out if her unknown correspondent is none other than the town's biggest suspect. And the surprising truth about her suitor's identity has her contemplating leaving her Amish roots behind forever...
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Christmas is coming fast for everyone in Harvest, Ohio, where the Englischers live peacefully amongst the Amish -- at least for the most part. But no one can dispute that Margo Rawlings wants the town to be the best, even if it means hounding poor Bailey with more work. But while Bailey steadfastly refuses to accept anything, telling Margot she has her hands full as it it, Charlotte finds herself offering to attach the notes to the candy canes so the volunteers can deliver them on Christmas Eve to their recipients.
The notes, which are meant to be small reminders of love or affection for someone else, are attached to the canes and given to them. People will put a dollar for the cane along with a note so the town can afford better costumes for the Living Nativity. Charlotte doesn't think it will be too much trouble for her, but when she finds a note addressed to herself, she's stunned and excited at the same time. She can't imagine anyone wanting to be with her, since she left her own district to live with her Cousin Clara, Bailey's grandmother. At twenty-two and still unbaptized, she hasn't made the decision whether she wants to join the Amish faith or not. This has caused a rift in her family, and even with some of the local Amish. But now she has another problem: who is the man who is sending her notes?
When Bailey's neighbor Abel Esh seems to know what's going on, Charlotte is disturbed and wonders if he's sending them as a prank to hurt her feelings. Determined to find out the truth, Charlotte, along with an elderly Amish man named Uriah who has a secret of his own, sets out to 'stakeout' the box where people are putting the money and notes for her to collect. But what she finds out isn't what she expects, and it could change her life forever...
This novella in the series is delightful in the fact that it's told from Charlotte's point of view. She takes center stage and does an admirable job of narrating the story. While it's not a murder mystery, there is definitely a mystery (or two) within, and Charlotte is trying to find out the truth of who is sending her notes of affection.
While this book can be read in an hour or two, it's a welcome relief from the world around us, and brings us closer to the holidays with a nice tale of how Harvest decorates for the Christmas season and Charlotte coming closer to making a decision about the direction her life will be going in the future. It also shows us a dark side of one of the inhabitants; but I can't say we didn't expect anything less of that person anyway.
In the end, everything comes together in a lovely Christmas package and it's a wonderful addition to the series. Highly recommended.
More on Amanda Flower's Books: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/f/amanda-flower/
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