Book 24, 2017
Jan. 30th, 2017 10:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chez_jaeI spent a good portion of the day reading The Thrill of the Haunt by EJ Copperman. It's part of the author's "Haunted Guesthouse" mystery series.
Business at Alison's guesthouse is slow, and her resident ghost, PI Paul, is moping for lack of anything to do. When a woman hires Alison to tail her husband, in hopes of catching him cheating on her, Alison reluctantly takes on the case, both for the income and to perk Paul up.
In the meantime, a homeless man in town has been murdered, and a woman from Alison's past insists on hiring Alison to investigate. The man, Everett, had been claiming in the days before he was murdered that he was being threatened by a ghost. The woman who hires Alison does so in front of a group of her cronies, in an effort to humiliate Alison and out her as the "ghost lady", all in retaliation for the fact that Alison uncovered the woman's own adulterous affair previously.
Alison is soon at her wit's end, trying to run a guesthouse, keep her guests happy, juggle two investigations, figure out how to keep her new boyfriend, Josh, from learning she can see ghosts, take care of her daughter, and stop one of her guests from doing an exorcism on the house. When the alleged mistress in the cheating husband case is murdered, Alison has two murders on her plate, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
My, there was certainly a lot going on! I felt sorry for Alison, who was being pulled in so many different directions that I'm surprised her head didn't explode. Her nemesis, Kerin, needed a punch in the face, and Josh became cool towards her when he sensed she was keeping something from him. The ending wasn't as satisfying as it could have been, because...
It turned out that Cybill, the guest who was keen to exorcise Alison's resident ghosts, was actually a medium herself, and was in cahoots with the ghosts to get Alison to acknowledge them. I'm sorry, but that really pissed me off. Alison believed that Cybill's impromptu exorcism was actually harming her spectral friends, which compelled her to scream at Cybill to stop...in front of a large group of people, including the bitch Kerin. If I were Alison, I wouldn't have been very forgiving. It was mean and spiteful manipulation on the part of Paul and Maxie and Cybill. Alison's main reason for playing down the ghost aspect of her house is to protect her daughter from being bullied at school, but apparently that wasn't good enough. No! Alison had to publicly acknowledge that, yes, her home is haunted, and the ghosts are her friends. Also, once Alison confessed her abilities to Josh, he just laughed it off and said he'd suspected it all along. Excuse me?! He, too, had to act like a sullen child in an effort to manipulate Alison into admitting something that she is still coming to terms with, herself? *shakes head in disgust*
Favorite line: Have you ever felt as if you were the slow-witted cousin at the Mensa family reunion?
Would have given this a five for its fast pace and intricate plotting. Instead, I'm knocking one star off for the aggravation:
****
Business at Alison's guesthouse is slow, and her resident ghost, PI Paul, is moping for lack of anything to do. When a woman hires Alison to tail her husband, in hopes of catching him cheating on her, Alison reluctantly takes on the case, both for the income and to perk Paul up.
In the meantime, a homeless man in town has been murdered, and a woman from Alison's past insists on hiring Alison to investigate. The man, Everett, had been claiming in the days before he was murdered that he was being threatened by a ghost. The woman who hires Alison does so in front of a group of her cronies, in an effort to humiliate Alison and out her as the "ghost lady", all in retaliation for the fact that Alison uncovered the woman's own adulterous affair previously.
Alison is soon at her wit's end, trying to run a guesthouse, keep her guests happy, juggle two investigations, figure out how to keep her new boyfriend, Josh, from learning she can see ghosts, take care of her daughter, and stop one of her guests from doing an exorcism on the house. When the alleged mistress in the cheating husband case is murdered, Alison has two murders on her plate, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
My, there was certainly a lot going on! I felt sorry for Alison, who was being pulled in so many different directions that I'm surprised her head didn't explode. Her nemesis, Kerin, needed a punch in the face, and Josh became cool towards her when he sensed she was keeping something from him. The ending wasn't as satisfying as it could have been, because...
It turned out that Cybill, the guest who was keen to exorcise Alison's resident ghosts, was actually a medium herself, and was in cahoots with the ghosts to get Alison to acknowledge them. I'm sorry, but that really pissed me off. Alison believed that Cybill's impromptu exorcism was actually harming her spectral friends, which compelled her to scream at Cybill to stop...in front of a large group of people, including the bitch Kerin. If I were Alison, I wouldn't have been very forgiving. It was mean and spiteful manipulation on the part of Paul and Maxie and Cybill. Alison's main reason for playing down the ghost aspect of her house is to protect her daughter from being bullied at school, but apparently that wasn't good enough. No! Alison had to publicly acknowledge that, yes, her home is haunted, and the ghosts are her friends. Also, once Alison confessed her abilities to Josh, he just laughed it off and said he'd suspected it all along. Excuse me?! He, too, had to act like a sullen child in an effort to manipulate Alison into admitting something that she is still coming to terms with, herself? *shakes head in disgust*
Favorite line: Have you ever felt as if you were the slow-witted cousin at the Mensa family reunion?
Would have given this a five for its fast pace and intricate plotting. Instead, I'm knocking one star off for the aggravation:
****
