Muffin to Fear (A Merry Muffin Mystery #5)

Author:  Victoria Hamilton
Genre:   Mystery

Mass Market Paperback; [Audio CD]; Digital Book
ISBN #:  9780425282595; [9781515914174]
Berkley Publishing; [Tantor Audio]
304 Pages
$7.99; [$39.99}; $6.99 Amazon
July 25, 2017

⭐⭐

While Merry is distracted by her quickly planned marriage to Virgil Grace and a blissful honeymoon in New York, her friend Pish invites the ghost-hunting crew from the TV show Haunt Hunt to investigate Merry's home, Wynter Castle.  Merry soon discovers that not only is the crew out of sync, there are so many feuds and squabbles, it's a miracle they get a show produced at all.

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I was disappointed in the way this book ended.  It made me feel like I wasted my time reading any of the series in the first place.

Following is a major spoiler, so please don't read any of it if you've planned on reading this book at all:

Throughout the entire series Merry has been running a muffin business and trying to decide what to do with her castle - first she wants to sell it, then they wants to find a way to keep it.  So of course, we're thinking she'll figure out something, maybe renting to people and actually hiring a manager to run the place, or turn it into a B&B, etc.; but noooo...she, of course, marries Virgil (no spoiler there, it's in the beginning of the book), so now she has someone to help her run it.  But instead she decides to use the castle for a winter home for a symphony orchestra!  Then, she buys a dilapidated house and moves it onto her property and decides to live there instead.  I like music as much as anyone, but who wants to listen to a bunch of musicians practicing all winter?  Also, why didn't she ever make Becket an indoor cat?  If she knows there are coyotes, that's just irresponsible.  (There's no reason at all for him to have been an outdoor cat.  Changing a litter box isn't that difficult).  I don't even know why the author brought in Becket; through the entire series he wasn't a major presence, more of a means to bring in readers who liked cats - a convenience to the story line occasionally.  Anyway, the ending felt like a cop-out to me.  Honestly, if there were any indications it would have ended this way, I never would have read the series at all.  I don't care if others don't agree; I really disliked it.

I also felt that if the author was even going to hint at the castle being haunted, it would have made the series so much more interesting if it was done from the first book.  Sorry, but it just wasn't that good and I don't know whether I'll continue with this series or not. 

https://www.amazon.com/Muffin-Fear-Merry-Mystery/dp/0425282597/ref

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2438006102

More on Victoria Hamilton's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/h/victoria-hamilton/

Much Ado About Muffin (A Merry Muffin Mystery #4)

Author:  Victoria Hamilton
Genre:  Mystery

Mass Market Paperback; Audio CD; Digital Book
ISBN #:  9780425282588; 9781515950363
Berkley Publishing
304 Pages
$7.19; $25.20; $7.99 Amazon
August 2, 2016

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Opera singer Roma Toscano may have a crippling case of stage fright, but she certainly is stirring up drama in Autumn Vale, New York, as she prepares for an upcoming performance at Merry's Wynter Castle.  With her flamboyant style and flirtatious personality, Roma attracts fans as well as critics, including the town's postmistress - and Merry's bitter foe - Minnie Urquhart.

But Roma and Minnie's heated rivalry goes cold after Merry discovers Minnie dead at the post office.  While every clue seems to be another ingredient in the investigation of Roma, Merry thinks the case is half-baked, and she's eager to get her mitts on the real killer...

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Merry Wynter owns Wynter Castle in upstate New York.  She's been in Spain for a couple of months because her late husband's mother wanted to make peace with her (another story).  When she returns home she finds things changed.  Her beau Virgil meets her at the airport and is surly toward her; her roommate Pish has taken in a temperamental opera star - Roma Toscano - that Merry dislikes, her friend Emerald has been taken in by a cult-like personality and is pushing Merry away, and the rest of her friends are acting like she's been gone a year.

But when she's out with Virgil's mother Gogi and they discover the body of the local postmistress, who has been stabbed with a letter opener that Merry recognizes as being owned by Roma, rumors begin to fly.  Everyone thinks the diva committed the crime, but Merry isn't so sure and takes it upon herself to find the killer and set things about her to rights...

Well, this book was a bit of a disappointment.  Merry went to Spain for a couple of months to make peace with her late husband's mother, and enjoy a vacation of sorts, but when she returns home everyone treats her like the enemy.  I guess in the town of Autumn Vale no one is expected to take vacations.  After all, why would you want to go anywhere else?  You're a traitor if you leave the city!  I think these people need a reality check.

Also, when she gets back to her castle she finds that her live-in friend Pish hasn't been taking care of her cat.  He tells her that Becket went for longer and longer walks and just never showed back up.  This is supposed to be her "dearest friend."  I don't know about you, but my dearest friend would not allow my cats to disappear.  If Pish couldn't handle it, he should have told her before she left so she could have made other arrangements.  (Honestly, with not much training, Becket could become an exclusive indoor cat.  I've adopted several feral cats and they're all indoor cats now).  Also, before anyone gets the wrong idea, the coyotes of New York are not the same coyotes that live around my neck of the woods.  Western and Eastern are different in that those in upstate are hybrids - yet another reason to keep Becket indoors.

Then Pish just invites Roma to stay at the castle without asking Merry first.  Plus, Roma is a pig.  She leaves things lying around everywhere, and our spineless Merry doesn't tell her to clean up the mess or find a hotel.  She doesn't even tell Pish that he needs to tell Roma to clean up.  As a matter of fact, in this book it seemed as if Merry was the boarder and Pish owned the castle, because he did whatever he wanted and Roma walked around dramatically, and they practically took over the place.  What kind of friend is he?  He ignores her cat and invites someone to stay rent free who trashes the place, leaving her to do everything, including cooking for the ungrateful witch.  I'd send her out to eat every single meal.  I guess Merry had two divas to deal with.

Then there's the problem of Emerald being taken in by a cult-like person named Crystal who is living off of her and making Em go back to work in a dive bar, even disciplining Em's daughter Lizzie, and she allows her to do this.  Does anyone say anything?  No!  Not until Merry comes back and decides to investigate and discover things aren't adding up.

Plus, this is the place to go if you just want to leech off people - Roma is leeching off of Merry, Crystal is leeching off of Emerald, and even when Minnie (the postmistress) dies, no one goes to her house and tells the leeches there that they have to leave!  I'm sorry, but they should have been told to get out instead of acting like squatters.

I didn't understand why she had to go around town asking everyone to forgive her for taking a vacation.  Jealous, maybe?  Who does that?  'Gee, I'm sorry I went on a nice vacation.  Next time I'll just go camping in them there woods, okay?' 

In the end, the mystery was just okay; although it made sense, by that time I was already irritated by the people of this town and the fact that Pish isn't a very good friend after all.

https://www.amazon.com/Much-About-Muffin-Merry-Mystery/dp/0425282589/

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2048704497

More on Victoria Hamilton's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/h/victoria-hamilton/

Death of an English Muffin (Merry Muffin Mystery #3)

Author:  Victoria Hamilton
Genre:  Mystery

Mass Market Paperback; Audio CD; Digital Book
ISBN #:  9780425258859; 9781515950356
Berkley Publishing
304 Pages
$7.19; $24.99; $7.99 Amazon
July 7, 2015

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They say one's home is one's castle, but when it comes to Wynter Castle, Merry would like it to belong to someone else.  But until a buyer bites, she could use some extra dough, so she decides to take in renters.  The idea pans out, and Merry's able to find a handful of tenants eager to live in a real castle.  The only problem is most of them are crumby, tea-swilling old biddies.

The Legion of Horrible Ladies, as Merry calls them, is led by the terribly nasty - and fabulously wealthy - Cleta Sanson.  The abrasive Englishwoman keeps everyone whipped into a frenzy - until she meets an embarrassing end behind a locked door.  Evidence reveals that Cleta was murdered, yet non one is privy to how the deed was done.  Merry knows she must quickly find the killer before another of her guests gets greased...

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Merry Wynter inherited Wynter Castle from her late uncle, and has decided to temporarily take in renters.  When her friend Pish says his aunt wants to stay, Merry is delighted.  But Aunt Lush shows up with a group of four other women - all well-to-do, whom Merry has termed the Legion of Horrible Ladies.  Now Merry's stuck with a demanding group of older women who don't seem to want to leave, and one of them - Cleta Sanson - outdoes all the others with her nasty barbs against others.  But since she's paid for the time, Merry's stuck with her or faces a lawsuit.

When Cleta is found dead it's at first considered natural circumstances.  But the coroner discovers that Cleta was murdered, and since the likely suspects are all staying at the castle, Merry doesn't want a murderer under her roof and does a little investigating on her own, hoping one of them will let something slip that leads her to the killer...

I was really hoping that this book, the third in the series, would improve over the last but it was not to be.  A lot of the book rehashed the characters from other books and it got tiresome hearing how what a good friend Pish was.  As a matter of fact, we really didn't get to know anything about most the guests, so never got to connect with them.  As far as the locals go, I can't in all honesty like Juniper, who doesn't listen to her employer and is mouthy; nor Emerald, who seems to have "found religion" of a sort and spouts it to Merry every chance she gets.  That's annoying in itself.

I also didn't feel the connection between Merry and Virgil.  I get that they're interested in each other, but there's no spark at all.  They seem to be just two people who sort of leeched onto one another for lack of better prospects around.  I also wondered about Merry's age.  When the books began she was thirty-nine, but now it's less than a year later and she's 'almost' forty-two?  How fast do people age in this town?  Some people even age backwards.  In the first book, Hannah mentions how she's thirty (stated "Binny left when Hannah was fifteen so it must have been fifteen years ago"); but now she's in her twenties.  Curious, indeed.

Of all the characters, I disliked Lauda as much as Cleta.  She was pushy, annoying, and rude; and we're supposed to believe she was the poor put-upon niece.  If I were Merry, I would have just handed her a refund check and told her to hightail it off my land.  I wouldn't put up with a rude, nasty person like that.  She really wasn't much different than her aunt and all Merry did was trade one for the other.  In Lauda's case, though, she could have removed her from the premises.  There's also something said to Lauda that pertains to the murder which didn't make sense to me because it would have to be proven in order to be valid.

I also didn't get why Merry would allow five people (plus herself, Pish, and assorted employees) to live at her home and cook for each and every one of them.  Just because someone is paying you rent doesn't mean you're responsible for all their meals.  I've yet to see a landlord provide meals to all their tenants (if people are staying for months you in effect become a landlord, not an innkeeper) three times a day.  Maybe breakfast, but send those people out to eat.  Not to mention the recipes in the back are horrendous - Chicken Spaghetti?  Bacon and Peanut Butter Muffins?  (What is it with the bacon muffins?  She had bacon muffins in the first book, too).  Just my opinion on the recipes, though...

Anyway, as you can tell I wasn't enthralled with this book.  It was merely average as far as cozies go.  There was nothing to make it stand out and even when Merry discovers a little bit more about her father's family in each book, it's not really interesting enough to make me care anything about any of them, Merry included.  She's got a rather morose type of personality, lamenting about one thing or another all the time.  At least she's beginning to change a little bit toward the end of the book, so that's a good thing.

At the end, while I didn't feel we were given any clues as to who the murderer was, it was satisfactory and everything came out alright.  As I said, this is fine for a mystery and can be read in a few hours or so.

https://www.amazon.com/Death-English-Muffin-Merry-Mystery/dp/0425258858/

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2432370851

More on Victoria Hamilton's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/h/victoria-hamilton/

Bran New Death (A Merry Muffin Mystery #1)

Author:  Victoria Hamilton
Genre:  Mystery

Mass Market Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #:  97804252588352
Berkley Publishing
305 Pages
$6.39; $7.99 Amazon
September 3, 2013

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Merry is making a fresh start in small-town Autumn Vale, New York, in the castle she's inherited from her late uncle, Melvyn.  The house is run down and someone has been digging giant holes on the grounds, but with its restaurant-quality kitchen, the place has potential for her new baking business.  She even has her first client - the local retirement home.

Unfortunately, Merry soon finds that quite a few townsfolk didn't like Uncle Mel, and she has inherited their enmity as well as his home.  Local baker Binny Turner and her crazy brother, Tom, blame Melvyn for their father's death, and Tom may be the one vandalizing her land.  But when Tom turns up dead in one of the holes in her yard, Merry needs to prove she had nothing to do with his death - or her new muffin-making career may crumble before it starts...

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Merry Wynter inherited her Uncle Melvyn's castle in upstate New York.  While it needs a lot of work, she decided to do just enough to get it sold.  But when she arrived she saw giant holes all over the property.  With the help of her real estate agent, Jack McGill, who has volunteered to fill in the holes, and the arrival of her best friend Shilo, Merry is determined to make it work.

But what she doesn't count on is the people in town didn't much seem to care for her uncle, nor do they care for her.  Trying to make friends isn't going to be easy.  At least the local sheriff's mother Gogi,  who runs a retirement home, has hired her to make muffins for the residents - if she can get a license to do so; but at least it's a start.  But when Gogi asks her to look into Melvyn's accident, Merry is surprised.  Gogi thinks it was murder, and Merry reluctantly agrees to do so.

But it isn't going to be easy, especially since she's identified the person responsible for the holes and he later turns up dead in one of them.  Now, since she was seen threatening him and it was on her property, Merry begins to wonder if Gogi isn't right.  Two people are dead.  How many more will there be unless she can find out the truth?...

For the most part, I enjoyed this little mystery of a woman who has left a nightmare of a job - and the rumors surrounding the reason she left - to move to a little hamlet that might welcome her.  But instead she finds more rumors - this time surrounding her uncle and his death.  And when a local man is found dead on her property, she soon becomes embroiled in the murder mystery.

Yet with the help of her best friend and a local real estate agent, she's beginning to unravel things that someone has worked very hard to keep hidden, and it soon she realizes that her uncle might indeed have been murdered.

But what I didn't like was the fact that the local sheriff - who at first seemed to like her (and I am sure that will grow in other books) - could actually think she committed a murder, left town, and came back to get someone to 'find the body.'  Why do I say this?  It's not really a spoiler, but there is a scene where Lizzie finds a camp on Merry's property, and when she leads Merry to it later, inside the tent is a body.  The body has been there awhile and I assume is decomposing (because this person was missing before Merry even arrived in Autumn Vale).  Yet Sheriff Grace asks Lizzie if Merry led her to the body instead of the other way around.  How much sense does that make?  Merry would have to arrive unknown to anyone, wander around the woods, find the camp, kill someone, then leave town (again without anyone seeing her) and come back and act like she didn't know what was going on.  Especially since when she arrived in town she didn't know where the castle was and had to ask the sheriff for directions.  Really?   If the sheriff believes even for a minute that Merry killed someone, she shouldn't have anything to do with him.  The author could have done better than this if she thought about it.  Plus, Merry herself doesn't seem all that sharp on the uptake.

Then there's the ho-hum factor.  It's the fact that it's always the same: the protagonist arrives to a new place from whatever she's running from, and never has any money.  Never.  She always arrives on the edge of bankruptcy.  Just once I'd like to see her get where she's going with a healthy bank account.  I'm so tired of reading about women who are struggling just to get by and have to start a new life.  This time it's because she blew her money in the stock market.  As I said, Merry doesn't seem to be all that sharp on the uptake.

Anyway, when all is said and done, it was written pretty well, and I liked several of the characters.  I'm hoping in the next book Merry will discover that her uncle left a little money tucked away for her, but we will see.

We don't know a whole lot about Merry except the fact that her husband passed away seven years ago.  They were married two years, and he's been gone over three times that length of time, but she still hasn't moved on.  It sounds harsh, but they weren't married that long, and while her memories are all good, even some of those would start to fade over that amount of time; yet she keeps mourning her loss, and that's why she can't move on.  I would have liked to have a bit more of a physical description than just she used to be a 'plus-sized' model.

At the last, there are a couple of recipes in the back that were just okay.  (I would rather have had the recipe for the carrot muffins instead of bacon, which I'll never make).  Other than this, it was an average mystery that can be read in one evening.

https://www.amazon.com/Bran-Death-Merry-Muffin-Mystery/dp/0425258831/

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2431298248

More on Victoria Hamilton's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/h/victoria-hamilton/