Book 16, 2022
Feb. 8th, 2022 07:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chez_jae
A Bazaar Murder by Amy PhippsMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
Over the course of a couple evenings, I read the ebook A Bazaar Murder by Amy Phipps. It's the first part of the "Amanda Blakemore" cozy mystery series. Story is in first person pov of the main character, Amanda.
After catching her husband in bed with her boss, Amanda returns to her small hometown of Juniper Falls, OH, to seek refuge with her grandmother, Margaret. Margaret allows Amanda to wallow in self-pity only so long before she rousts her and gets Amanda involved in the local church bazaar. There, the two of them stumble upon the dead body of Florence Hardy, the wealthiest, witchiest woman in town. When it's learned that Florence didn't die of natural causes and the sheriff seems keen on pinning the murder on her daughter, Cassie (who was with Amanda when Florence died), Amanda and Margaret realize they'll need to do some sleuthing of their own. To that end, they get the former sheriff, Henry, involved, along with Margaret's doddering friend, Olive. They come up with a list of suspects, and now all they need to do is narrow it down to a killer.
Okay. Well, this was novella length, so there wasn't much to sink one's teeth into. Characterizations were oka-ay, but it seemed like far too many were introduced for such a brief story. I found myself getting confused. Plot wasn't very smooth, and the mystery was solved when Amanda overheard the killer and accomplice discussing it. No actual sleuthing led to any deductions; it was simply handed to her on a silver platter.
Favorite line: "Wear whatever you have. God really doesn't care about fashion."
That's another thing. The story was juuuuuuuust a tad preachy. Not overly so, and not enough to turn me off, but it did cause me to raise my eyebrows. Overall, it was an okay read. It could have benefited from more fleshing out, tighter plotting, and fewer characters thrown at the reader. Giving it a score of two.
no subject
Date: 2022-02-10 03:23 am (UTC)but a book where I have to make a two page list of the characters and take notes, drifts into the
"more trouble than you're worth, cutie"
category.
no subject
Date: 2022-02-12 07:15 pm (UTC)