Welcome! I appreciate you stopping by today. Canal Days Calamity by Jamie M. Blair and A Fatal Collection by Mary Ellen Hughes are out today. I will be sharing my thoughts on these new cozy mysteries soon!
Cremains of the Day by Misty Simon is the first installment in A Tallie Graver Mystery series. Tallulah “Tallie” Graver has fallen hard
after the dissolution of her marriage to Walden Phillips III. She is now cleaning homes and working
part-time at Graver Funeral Home, the family business. Tallie left her vacuum at Darla Hackersham’s
home and returns to retrieve it. She
discovers feet sticking out of a closet and finds Darla with a knife sticking
out of her chest. This is just the beginning
of strange events plaguing Tallie. Max
Bennett, an old friend of Tallie’s brother, has returned to town and seems to
be following Tallie. He is handsome, but
it unnerving. She finds Katie tied up in
Gina’s shop and her ex-husband down in the alley. What is going on? Tallie needs to unearth the truth before she
ends up the next customer at her family’s business.
Cremains of the Day is not what I
expected. I was hoping for a mystery
series that centers around the Graver Funeral Home (it would have been unique). Tallie dislikes the family business and is
eager to avoid it (I was eager to avoid her).
I thought the characters lacked development. The details readers are given on Tallie are
mostly about her marriage and what has happened since it dissolved (along with
the fact that she really dislikes the family business). I found her very cliché (another clumsy, down-on-her
luck divorcee who does not get along with the local chief of police). She is newly divorced from a disdainful man
whom she let take advantage of her in the divorce settlement (of course). There is little information given on the town
and local businesses. The mystery is
medium level with some nice misdirection. There is mild foul language in
Cremains of the Day along with some crude references to Tallie’s ex-husbands
privates (they get zapped with a stun gun).
The next book in A Tallie Graver
Mystery series is Grounds for Remorse (I will not be reading it).
Thank you for visiting today. I will return tomorrow with my thoughts on Potions and Pastries by Bailey Cates. By the way--Why did the turkey sit on a tomahawk? To hatchet! May each of you have a splendid day. Take care and Happy Reading!
Kris
The Avid Reader
Thanks for the review. It helps me weed out the TBR pile. There are too many cozies out there to read that if it doesn’t catch my attention in the first chapter or so I’ll move on to the next.
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