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Annie Oakley, But Sleuth!

Revisado: 02-03-22 El oyente recibió este título gratis

Author Kari Bovee set out to do something with the classic Annie Oakley story that's never been done before: turn it into a cozy mystery! I'm a huge fan of cozy mysteries and historical fiction, and Annie Oakley flavoured review opportunities have been flocking to my inbox lately (seriously, sometimes trends in publishing are so niche it's hard to believe they're coincidence!) so I jumped at the chance to try out this series for the tour.

The pros: Bovee is definitely a skilled storyteller and crafted a believable plot of cozy mystery level difficulty and reader stress. It was light, easy to follow, and easy to get lost in. I do love the attempt to do something different with such a well known, factually based character and I do think Bovee has succeeded in developing a unique version of Annie that will appeal to mystery and historical fiction readers alike.

The cons: None of the other characters felt developed, there are a lot of egregious historical inaccuracies that didn't seem to be there on purpose to aid the plot, and this book (and its sequels) are on the long side for the cozy mystery genre. There are plenty of mini-plot sequences that do nothing for the overall story and could have been trimmed. There's also a relationship between two side characters that involves baby-making between a grown man and a very young girl that's creepy, unnecessary, and not founded in what's historically known for the man the older character is based on.

Susanna Burney's narration was easy to listen to and well-paced. She did a good job of making characters sound distinct without exaggerating anything too much or putting on an over-the-top performance that distracts. I would gladly pick up other audiobooks with this narrator.

I was granted complimentary audiobook access to Girl with a Gun as part of my participation in a blog tour for this series with iRead Book Tours. Thank you to all involved in affording me this opportunity! My thoughts are my own and my review is honest.

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Quick and Entertaining

Revisado: 02-03-22 El oyente recibió este título gratis

When Fiona stumbles across an old cameo (brooch) purchased long ago by her late uncle Wilbur Fiona finds herself solving the mystery of who he purchased it for. Wilbur was, after all, a bachelor to the end, and this is the sort of gift one would have bought for their sweetheart...

The Quick Mysteries are redeemed! The previous mini plot didn't impress me as much as the Fiona series normally does, but this one is a return to form and I loved it. If you love cozy mysteries in general or specifically McDonald's work and you don't have a lot of time to dedicate to a longer book, these quick mysteries are a real treat! At 50 pages or 76 minutes (at regular playback speed, I listen faster!) The Christmas Cameo offers a complete, layered, well-planned mystery plot with familiar likable characters in a quick, compact package. You don't even have to be familiar with the Fiona Quinn series to enjoy it, either!

Once again, Maren's narration is brilliant. Pacing is great, performance is entertaining without being distracting, and it's easy to tell which character is speaking or thinking (and whether they're speaking or thinking) at all times. I'm always glad to start a new McDonald audiobook and see that Maren has returned as the narrator!

I was granted complimentary access to The Christmas Cameo as part of my participation in a blog tour for the latest full-length Fiona Quinn title (Matrimony, Mahem, and Murder) with iRead Book Tours. Thank you to all involved in affording me this opportunity! My thoughts are my own and my review is honest.

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Poor Fiona!

Revisado: 02-03-22 El oyente recibió este título gratis

Rating: 3.5

It hurts me to rate a Fiona Quinn book lower than a solid 4 because I absolutely adore this series, both the full-length novels and the mini mysteries, but this one just fell a little flat. It was funny in a slapstick sort of way but it was more predictable than usual for any of McDonald's cozy mysteries and the plot really didn't feel like a mystery in general. Yes the plot asks and solves a question, but most plots in most genres do that. This one didn't feel like a sleuth was needed (and one wasn't, Fiona is a kindergarten teacher after all) and felt more like a light comedic interlude from the greater arc of the series with poor Fiona as the butt of the joke that was Astrid Dingle. It felt like there was a potential mystery building around the new janitor but the payoff wasn't a mystery level payoff.

This isn't to say this story was poorly written, and I might have given it a 4 anyway, but the story uses the word g*psy frequently and that was quite grating on me. That's a racial slur. It's not cute. This book is only 3 years old. I don't think anything was meant by it so I only let it take half a star off my evaluation and I'm rounding favourably on sites that don't allow half stars.

As for Maren's narration, it was as well-paced and easy to listen to as always. Reviewing 5 Fiona Quinn titles for the same blog tour stretch I feel like I'm just repeating myself with my praise of Maren's voice acting skills. The only thing I noticed this time around is that there may have been a slip with a character name. The new incoming vice principal Fiona is worried about has the surname Tisdale and I swear at some point she was referred to as Ashley. The vice principal is not Disney channel actress Ashley Tisdale. That made me chuckle!

I was granted complimentary access to Crystal Clear Confusion as part of my participation in a blog tour for the latest full-length Fiona Quinn title (Matrimony, Mahem, and Murder) with iRead Book Tours. Thank you to all involved in affording me this opportunity! My thoughts are my own and my review is honest.

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Quick and Fun!

Revisado: 02-03-22 El oyente recibió este título gratis

In Harriet's Heist, Fiona's tiny dog Harriet and one of her mother's dogs go missing and only Harriet comes back... dripping in stolen jewels! What on Earth is going on?

I'm loving these quick mysteries! They're not as deep and involved as the longer Fiona books but the storytelling is still top-notch and well planned out. If you love cozy mysteries, especially ones by C.S. McDonald, and you don't have as much time to invest, read the minis!

As usual, Maren Swenson Waxenberg's narration is perfect. I've reviewed more than half of C.S. McDonald's Fiona Quinn and Owl's Nest titles at this point, most of them in audiobook format, and I'm always pleased to see that Maren is once again the voice I'll be listening to. It's the sort of performance that is clear and entertaining without being distracting. You can sit back and forget that you're not listening to your own internal reading voice, and that's the way I prefer to experience audiobooks.

I was granted complimentary access to Harriet's Heist as part of my participation in a blog tour for the latest full-length Fiona Quinn title (Matrimony, Mahem, and Murder) with iRead Book Tours. Thank you to all involved in affording me this opportunity! My thoughts are my own and my review is honest.

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Another Great Fiona Adventure

Revisado: 02-01-22

I absolutely love the Fiona Quinn series so I jumped on the chance to review several more. This one did not disappoint! Detective Nathan Landry has a cold case to solve that requires a little undercover work. Unfortunately for him, the undercover work requires competitive ballroom dancing skills, which he does not possess, and early dance training with his detective partner end disastrously with a broken ankle for his partner and a bruised ego for Nathan. Fiona's turn! This former ballet dancer turned kindergarten teacher already has plenty of detective experience, and she has *a* dance background, how hard can it be?

This one was such a fun ride! My early suspicions proved accurate this time (sometimes these surprise me in the end) but I don't mind that the mystery wasn't too difficult to suss out. Honestly, I think I'm just getting used to the way these books go and I had a good hunch. The plot is indeed tight and well written.

I also love how these books always have a secondary mystery that ties into the main conundrum in the end. This time Fiona's long-deceased (but not absent) grandmother is finally receiving letters from her sister that never made it to her when they should have decades earlier. Could these letters, or whoever else's mail is being uncovered and just now delivered, hold important clues to Fiona's current case? You'll have to read (or listen) to find out!

As usual, Maren Swenson Waxenberg's narration is top-notch as well. I find her pleasant and easy to listen to at any playback speed, and while she doesn't push her voice into wildly different character voices (which I appreciate, it doesn't always work out well for some narrators) I never have any trouble keeping track of who's speaking, what was spoken dialogue and what was internal thoughts, etc. I forget I'm listening, honestly. It sounds and feels like just a variation of the voice in my mind when I read for myself. True that doesn't mean anything stands out, but in this case that's a good thing. The story is allowed to shine and the delivery feels natural and easy.

As I usually comment on any of McDonald's cozy mysteries, these do all stand on their own quite well and you could jump into any of them as a first read. If you want to start here or skip to here without reading all five of the previous books, you absolutely can. With that said, do try to read the first book first, I think it'll make a little more sense if you meet the main cast as they were intended to be introduced before following them on the rest of your adventures. That goes for the Fiona Quinn books and the Owl's Nest books.

I was granted complimentary audiobook access to Mambo and Murder by C.S. McDonald as part of my participation in a blog tour for this title with iRead Book Tours. Thank you to all involved in affording me this opportunity! My thoughts are my own and my review is honest.

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Tolkein-like Adventure

Revisado: 11-08-21

Barrenworld is a classic high fantasy adventure/quest story with a rangy timeline and all the usual sorts of faces you expect to find in the genre. It's charming, quick to read, and has that refreshing, something new and unique feel despite also being quite familiar and true to form.

This book feels vaguely like a Tolkein adventure, but if Tolkein had partnered with George Lucas. We do end up with a slaves winning a race to earn their freedom situation that very much reminded me of Anniken's podracing storyline in The Phantom Menace.

Minor "this caught my attention and not in the best way" note: I'm not sure if it was the same character each time or different ones, but a woman gets described as "short and stout" multiple times in the same period of the story. At first it just caught my attention, but by the second or third time I found myself mentally reciting "I'm a Little Tea Pot."

Overall this was a quite, enjoyable read (listen) and as always with Holt's books, I had a lot of fun! His are the sort of books you pick up when you want something short and light but also Tolkein.

I reviewed this as an audiobook, so I do also need to comment on the narration. Joel Jackson does a great job conveying the events of this story with all the right emotions and pacing, and he brings every unique character to life with distinctions that make them stand out. I would definitely be happy to listen to more books Joel narrated for in the future.

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Its' Great to be Back at the Spooky Games Club!

Revisado: 09-15-21 El oyente recibió este título gratis

Peace seems to have fallen on this quaint little town of monsters and ghouls since the cursed boardgame mystery was solved, but life never stays easy in this place! An outsider is here to build an escape room that will draw tourists, and no sooner are the renovations complete when things start going horribly wrong and this poor little town once again has a body on its hands. Can Dahlia solve this mystery and save her friends?

If you love cozy mysteries and anything paranormal, you need to read this series! I was fortunate enough to be included on the review tour for the first installment, Broomsticks and Board Games, when it first got an audiobook, and I rated that one a 5 too. These mysteries are fun, just complex enough to keep you guessing, and wrap you up in the messed up personal lives of a very compelling cast of characters along the way. I want to keep coming back to this little town and the Spooky Games Club for along time yet!

There's enough backstory and world-building details built into this book here and there that I don't think reading these books in order is an absolute necessity. You might spoil the mystery of prior books if you read later ones first, but you're not going to be lost jumping in late.

Both author Amy and narrator Danielle did an amazing job of making me vehemently hate early antagonist Fred, and I think that made it even more fun! I also love how regular life still goes on. Dahlia still has to perform her daily good deed or stuffy the consequences. Faen still has kids to look after. Draven still have a business to run, and still grumbles about his nocturnal nature meaning he's the last to hear what happened. Broomhilda is still the most adorably catlike animate broom I've ever met. (Forgive me if I've misspelled names as I've only listened to the audio.)

In terms of the narrative performance, this is the same narrator returning as book one, and overall I do think Danielle Daly does a good job. She puts in maximum effort to vary every character's voice in pitch, cadence, accent, etc. so it's always easy to tell who's talking, even if you're terrible with remembering character names. My only negative comment is that some of the down-pitched voices sounded a little too forced and occasionally grated on me. I looked back at my review of the previous book and I didn't mention it then, so I'm not sure now if there was less of that done in book one or if I just noticed it more in this one. I do listen fast, 2x these days, and that tends to pitch things up if it's going to cause notable alterations, so it's also possible that those voices are a bit lower at regular speed and it all sounded fine at 1x and I just found the wrong speed to play it back for those voices. Every time I started the audio again and it defaulted to 1x it felt far too slow for me, though, so I didn't do enough 1x listening to tell.

Thanks again Amy McNulty for the review copy! I highly recommend this series to all cozy mystery lovers with an interest in paranormal fiction.

I was granted complimentary audio ARC access by author Amy McNulty via Audible promo code in exchange for an honest review. Thank you so much to Amy and her team! My thoughts are my own and my review is honest.

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Great Paranormal Mystery, Not Sure About Horror

Revisado: 09-10-21

Housh Hollow follows Jenna, a 16-year-old girl who’s forced to move home with her estranged mother following the death of her father, and things are getting strange. This town used to thrive around its lake-related industries, but pollution is killing everything excerpt the plant Jenna’s mother works for (and they swear they’re not the ones doing it.) Jenna’s mother is the leader of an elite socialite group in the town, the Diamonds, and Jenna finds herself being inducted into the junior chapter, the Pearls, against her will, and membership grants exclusive access to the services of witch women who seem to have completely different interests and wishes for Jenna. What’s going on?

Jenna’s full-circle transformation from alternative culture kid Jenna to socialite Jennifer and back again was particularly fun for me, as a Jennifer who goes by Jenna and has never felt the need to dress and impress with mainstream ideas of fashion. I also loved the mystery surrounding the witch women and Jenna’s cryptic “unknown” results on her DNA test for a high school history class. This town has so much going on, and it’s clear Jenna’s family is tangled up at the heart of it, but exactly what the truths are weren’t so easy to predict.

This book has a lot of mystery and thriller elements to it, and with a well-written 16-year-old protagonist it also feels very much like a YA paranormal fantasy novel. I was surprised when I returned to my blog tour documents to build the tour post and saw it’s actually filed under horror. Save for one somewhat gruesome scene near the end, I wouldn’t call this horror. (With that in mind, if you need to read a horror for some reason and don’t like truly scary horror, maybe this is the perfect option for you!)

I reviewed this book in audiobook format, so I must also comment on the narrative performance. Erin Seidel’s performance is spot-on, if you ask me. I truly bought her voice and pacing as teenaged, and it was very easy to follow along. I typically listen to audiobook at no less than 2x speed, and that was no problem with this book. I did hear a few brief snippets at 1x every time I returned to Audible, before resetting the speed to my preference, and it was definitely reasonable and not too unbearably slow, but if you normally listen to books faster then this is one to listen to at your usual speed.

I was granted complimentary audiobook access to Housh Hollow as part of my participation in a blog tour for this title with Audiobookworm Promotions. Thank you to all involved in affording me this opportunity! My thoughts are my own and my review is honest.

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Another Great Fiona Adventure

Revisado: 07-01-21 El oyente recibió este título gratis

Murder and mayhem has followed Fiona to work this time! When a fellow teacher is murdered, Fiona is attacked in her classroom, and anonymous notes are being left around for her to find, it's obvious that someone has it out for Fiona and she'd better solve the mystery before she shares her colleague's fate.

If you check my Goodreads reading history on this one you'll see I put in an update at 2% just to note that this book already deserved at least 4 stars because Fiona compared one of her kindergarten students to Junie B Jones. Yes! I grew up with Junie B Jones books, I have a few of them tucked into my daughter's closet waiting for her to get to that reading level, and my mom and sister teach that age group. That reference was PERFECT and it really set the scene for "Fiona in the classroom" for the rest of the book.

This book is exactly what I've come to expect from Fiona Quinn books. It's fun, you predict most of it but still get a bit of a surprise at the end and enjoy the whole ride despite the predictability, and ghost granny provides excellent comic relief by way of absurdity. I really would like to know who's she's having coffee with, though...

As usual, Maren Swenson Waxenberg's narration is impeccable and a pleasure to listen to.

If you love cozy mystery and you haven't read these books yet, what are you waiting for? Read Murder on Pointe first so you meet all the key characters as intended and then enjoy the series in any order you wish!

I was granted complimentary audiobook access to Taking Notes on Murder as part of my participation in a blog tour for Maxed Out with iRead Book Tours. Thank you to all involved in affording me this opportunity! My thoughts are my own and my review is honest.

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Cute Superhero Story with Positive Disability Rep

Revisado: 07-01-21 El oyente recibió este título gratis

Villain's Vacation is the second book in the Secret Supers series. I admit I haven't read the first book, but I didn't feel lost at all. Clearly the first book was the introduction to the human characters, and possibly the team's formation, but there isn't any critical information left out. Four disabled preteens are saving the world X-Men style and their handler writes their adventures as fiction novels.

In this instalment, the team gets a mascot in the form of Dancer, a hamster owned by one of the team members who also gained special abilities along with the team but no one noticed before now. He's literate! Dancer reads everything he can get his paws on and ends up communicating with the team via cellphone.

I love all the positive disability representation in this book full of unstoppable kids with powers that replace and complement what they've lost. The addition of a talking hamster is adorable and will definitely make this book more appealing to the kids who might have been hesitant to read a superhero book.

My one criticism of the book itself is that the dialogue, though definitely reading level appropriate for a middle-grade audience, sometimes ventures into painfully blatant exposition territory. Middle-grade readers might not mind, but the parents and teachers reading along with them (if this is a group or family read) probably will.

On the flip side, there are so many pop culture references in this that those adult reading buddies will catch onto and laugh at. Scooby-Doo fans? There are easter eggs in here for you!

The audiobook narration was good overall and I appreciated the narrator's effort to make the different characters sound distinct. With that said, I nearly turned it off in the beginning when Dancer the hamster was thinking his dialogue rather than typing it. Thank goodness his voice shifted when he started using technology because the pitch-shifted squeaky rodent voice was indecipherable at my preferred 2x listening speed!

Overall this is a cute superhero story with a lot of important positive representation, and I highly recommend these books to scifi and superhero fans looking for a good middle-grade series.

I was granted complimentary audiobook access to Villain's Vacation as part of my participation in a blog tour for this title with Audiobookworm Promotions. Thank you to all involved in affording me this opportunity! My thoughts are my own and my review is honest.

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