Author: Debra Sennefelder
Genre: Mystery
Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #: 9781960511393
Beyond The Page Publishing
228 Pages
$14.99; $5.99 Amazon
October 6, 2023
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
When her best friend's Aunt Issy falls ill, food blogger Hope Early agrees to help him hand out Halloween candy at his aunt's house, which is rumored to be cursed. A murder-suicide took place there a century ago, and legend has it that a woman has died there every twenty years since -- on Halloween. Hope doesn't really believe in curses or ghosts, but when all the trick-or-treaters are gone and she discovers a woman's dead body on the front lawn, she wonders if the curse might be real after all.
The Hope and her friend discover a cache of love letters linking the dead woman to Aunt Issy's husband years ago, and Hope is certain they've uncovered the motive for murder -- and the police are certain Aunt Issy is their main suspect. Determined to prove Issy's innocence and nab the real culprit, Hope starts shaking other branches of the family tree. But she forgets that Halloween isn't the only day people hide behind masks, and if she's not careful, Hope will come face-to-face with a ghoulish fiend who's not afraid to kill again...
✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽
Hope Early is finally getting her life in order. She has a successful food blog, sold e-cookbooks, and is finally getting a physical cookbook published. She's even moving forward with renovating her barn for a kitchen where she can film her show and practice recipes. Everything seems to be going smoothly, until her boyfriend Ethan changes their Halloween plans...
The plans she had with him and his two daughters, where they were going to go trick-or-treating. It appears that his ex-wife, now out of rehab, has decided she wants the girls for Halloween, so Hope really can't do much. But her best friend Drew comes to the rescue when he wants Hope to help give out candy at his ailing Aunt Issy's home, which is reputed to be haunted. Hope loves both Drew and Issy, so she's happy to do so.
When Hope is cleaning up the front yard after the evening is done, she's greeted with an unwelcome surprise: there's a dead body dressed like a witch sitting on the lawn. Definitely dead. And no one seems to know who the woman is; not Hope, Issy, Drew, or anyone in town. So who was this woman, and why was she here? All Hope knows is that the woman has been following her for a couple of days, but that's all the information she has.
Then Drew and Hope find old letters in a box that's been stuffed in the walls of the home that Drew is renovating. Reading them, they find that they're connected to Issy's late husband. Does Issy know the source of the letters? She's too ill to ask, so they decide to keep it quiet for a while. But doing so could compromise the investigation. And when Drew's family members might be implicated in the murder, he asks for Hope's help. Even when the police warn her to stay out of it, she knows she can't. But could it lead to her own murder as well?...
This is the sixth book in the series, and I was taken by how good it was. Although I felt that it had a slow start, once the body was found, things began to pick up the pace. It was more a mystery-within-a-mystery, and I absolutely love it when that happens. Solving two mysteries at once is wonderful for the brain. And this was definitely a good book for that to occur.
Hope knows she has to ruffle feathers to get to the truth, but she forges ahead anyway. Poor Drew has
his own problems to sort out, so he's not much help in this one, but her sister is along for the ride. It's an interesting tale to be told, and clues go from one end to the other, but nothing seems to be giving the truth of the matter. Confusion, misdirection, intrigue and too many secrets abound in this mystery, yet it all works together well.
When we come to the end of the story and the killer is revealed, it was a surprise to me; but then again, it was supposed to be. It's a delightful narrative that pulls you right from the murder and keeps you from putting down the book until the end. Highly recommended.
I was given an advance copy from the publisher and NetGalley but this in no way influenced my review.
More on Debra Sennefelder's Books: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/s/debra-sennefelder/
No comments:
Post a Comment