Author: Linnea West
Genre: Mystery
Trade Paperback; Digital Book
ISNB#: 9781792828904
Independently Published
282 Pages
$12.99; $3.99 Amazon
October 2, 2018
⭐⭐
Tessa is back in her hometown, picking up the pieces of her life as a young widow. Besides passing the time working at the B&B that her parents own, Tessa joined the Halloween Hayride Committee to help give back to her small town. Plans are going great but then Earl whisks into town, threatening to shut down the beloved Hayride and someone takes it upon themselves to run him down with the tractor.
Now Tessa's gotten herself tangled up in the mess, tripping over clues and getting more and more involved. Someone has to get the Hayride back on track and she has decided that someone has to be her. It is the only way she can think of to take charge of her life and thank her hometown for welcoming her back when her life fell apart.
The only problem is that while Tessa is trying to solve the case, the murderer is keeping an eye on her. Can Tessa figure out who ran over Earl before the tractor-riding killer strikes again?
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Tessa moved back home to her small Minnesota town when her husband was killed in an accident. Now she's a young widow who works at her parents' B&B. She's also joined the Halloween Hayride committee, glad to be part of the community again. But one morning when the committee is meeting, a strange man enters and makes demands of them or he'll shut it down. Tessa later learns that Earl inherited everything from his late uncle, and wants to charge them an exorbitant fee to use the land for the hayride, that they've used forever for free.
When Tessa and her friend Clark go to the shed where the tractor is kept, it's missing. They soon discover that someone has used it to run over Earl, and now the police are looking for someone with a motive -- like the mayor. Tessa takes it upon herself to find out who killed Earl, but he wasn't well-liked in the community. With too many suspects and too many motives, she needs to find a killer who just might be someone she never expected...
I love 'reading the season,' and since Halloween isn't too far away, I thought I would start with this book, since it sounded promising. Soon enough I discovered that it wasn't. Tessa, who only lost her husband a little over a year ago, is now making goo-goo eyes at two bachelors in town: Clark, a high school teacher; and her ex-boyfriend Max, who's a police officer. She's "casually dating" them both, meaning they can see other people and so can she. As she reminds us often (too often), it's 'just fun and games'. But they both pretty much make her knees weak, and I find that odd since her husband hasn't been gone that long and she professes her grief for him often, too. Not that I'm saying people shouldn't move on. But it's one thing to profess grief and another in the next sentence for two men to make you all giggly like a teenager.
Unfortunately, I also abhor love triangles. So much so I avoid them if possible. Then there's the idea of 'couples costumes' which inhabits her mind, and which I found odd, since it seemed a big decision of which 'boy' to go to the festival with based on a costume. (Tessa also ate a lot of donuts, stressed or not. Her body and skin must love her for it.)
There was a lot of repetition. So, so much. Like how much she loved her husband. How she is only casually dating these two men. We get it. You don't want a commitment and neither do they, but we don't need to be told that constantly. It was taking away from the mystery portion of the book, and it was almost as if Tessa was trying to convince herself that she was still mourning her husband. Sorry, but that's just how I saw it.
I really do love to try new authors, but this book got on my last nerve, and I just wanted it to end. When the ending comes and the killer is revealed, I didn't find it too believable at all; and I wish I did. I hate dinging new authors, and because of that, I will read the next in the series and see if it improves. Hopefully, the characters will have some depth by then. Sorry.
More on Linnea West's Books: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/w/linnea-west/
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