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Mark @ Carstairs Considers (2434 KP) rated Christmas Cocoa and a Corpse in Books
Nov 8, 2022
Murder Leaves Behind Spilled Cocoa
It’s the week before Christmas, and business is booming at Robbie’s restaurant, Pans ‘N Pancakes. However, not everyone is in a festive mood. Local businessman Jed Greenburg is found dead on the sidewalk while he was out walking a Chocolate lab puppy, the spilled contents of a mug of Robbie’s special hot chocolate blend next to him. What happened?
It’s no surprise to me that I enjoyed this novella. Several of the series regulars are away for the holiday, which actually works out very well since this is a novella. We are able to focus on the characters important to mystery. Robbie’s boyfriend’s family are actually key to the events as they unfold, and it was great to get to know them a little better. The mystery was strong, and I enjoyed watching it unfold. As always, the scenes in the restaurant made my mouth water, and I am now craving breakfast foods. Fortunately, the novella includes a couple of recipes, including a special hot chocolate recipe.
NOTE: This story is a novella, roughly 100 pages, and was originally part of the novella collection Christmas Cocoa Murder. If you have that book, there is no need to buy this ebook. If you haven’t read the story, now is the time to sit back and enjoy this Christmas mystery.
It’s no surprise to me that I enjoyed this novella. Several of the series regulars are away for the holiday, which actually works out very well since this is a novella. We are able to focus on the characters important to mystery. Robbie’s boyfriend’s family are actually key to the events as they unfold, and it was great to get to know them a little better. The mystery was strong, and I enjoyed watching it unfold. As always, the scenes in the restaurant made my mouth water, and I am now craving breakfast foods. Fortunately, the novella includes a couple of recipes, including a special hot chocolate recipe.
NOTE: This story is a novella, roughly 100 pages, and was originally part of the novella collection Christmas Cocoa Murder. If you have that book, there is no need to buy this ebook. If you haven’t read the story, now is the time to sit back and enjoy this Christmas mystery.
French Quarter Fright Night
9.0
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Book
The third in the fabulous cozy mystery series with a vintage flair from USA Today bestselling and...
A Home for Christmas
Book
Will six strangers find hope, love, and family at Christmas? A collection of three historical...
Christmas Romance Historical Western Romance Christmas Special Seasonal
Stanley's Christmas Redemption (Mission City #2)
8.0
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Stanley I have life figured out—a good job, a nice car, and an ex-boyfriend whose heart I...
Merissa (13373 KP) rated Something Cryptid This Way Comes (Love in Maplewood #9) in Books
Jul 11, 2025
SOMETHING CRYPTID THIS WAY COMES is the ninth book in the Love in Maplewood series and can be read as a standalone.
Bram and Trevor were best friends growing up, until Bram left Maplewood. They have remained long-distance friends and go on holiday together once a year. The only trouble is Trevor thinks a whole lot more of Bram than just Best Friends. And Bram is afraid to rock the boat and lose the friendship. Along comes some Maplewood Matchmakers!
This is a nice story with good pacing and low angst. Trevor and Bram don't wait for the closing act to get their thoughts in gear, giving some nice scenes where they realise who they are to each other. Most of the intimate scenes between them are, well, not fade-to-black exactly, more like fade-to-grey. And when trouble does occur, it is easily sorted with little drama.
And that, I'm afraid, is why I'm giving it 3 stars. It was nice. It didn't thrill me, it didn't sweep me away, and I didn't feel that connected with the main characters. It was just... nice.
** Same worded review will appear elsewhere. **
* A copy of this book was provided to me with no requirements for a review. I voluntarily read this book; the comments here are my honest opinion. *
Merissa
Archaeolibrarian - I Dig Good Books!
Jul 11, 2025
Bram and Trevor were best friends growing up, until Bram left Maplewood. They have remained long-distance friends and go on holiday together once a year. The only trouble is Trevor thinks a whole lot more of Bram than just Best Friends. And Bram is afraid to rock the boat and lose the friendship. Along comes some Maplewood Matchmakers!
This is a nice story with good pacing and low angst. Trevor and Bram don't wait for the closing act to get their thoughts in gear, giving some nice scenes where they realise who they are to each other. Most of the intimate scenes between them are, well, not fade-to-black exactly, more like fade-to-grey. And when trouble does occur, it is easily sorted with little drama.
And that, I'm afraid, is why I'm giving it 3 stars. It was nice. It didn't thrill me, it didn't sweep me away, and I didn't feel that connected with the main characters. It was just... nice.
** Same worded review will appear elsewhere. **
* A copy of this book was provided to me with no requirements for a review. I voluntarily read this book; the comments here are my honest opinion. *
Merissa
Archaeolibrarian - I Dig Good Books!
Jul 11, 2025
Kodak Moments
Photo & Video and Productivity
App
Premium photo printing just got a lot smarter—the latest version of the KODAK MOMENTS App with...
MaryAnn (14 KP) rated Christmas Love Year Round (Kindred Lake #1) in Books
Mar 5, 2019
Cami Richardson is good at chasing away the men in her life: first Gavin Kinkaid, a former classmate she’d helped to bully, and later, her husband who left her widowed and a single mom. Now all she wants is to bring a smile back to her eight-year-old son. What she doesn’t expect is for Gavin to become her new neighbor.
Gavin wants to settle down after serving in the Air Force and mend the separation between him and his dad. What he didn’t count on is his changing feelings when he sees Cami as a kind woman instead of his former adversary.
When Cami’s son blindsides them both during the Christmas season, is their reunion at risk or will it grow stronger?
My Thoughts: A wonderful book just in time for the holidays! This book was an enjoyable read that is full of many lessons. This novel is not only about family, forgiveness and letting go, but also about bullying and what it can create. Bullying, name calling is something I believe we have all faced at one time in our lives. Beautifully written with a flowing storyline that keeps the reader interested.
The characters are interesting, down to earth and easy to relate to. This is an enjoyable romance novel with lessons to learn that the reader can read during the holiday season or any time of the year! I look forward to reading more from Elaine Stock.
Gavin wants to settle down after serving in the Air Force and mend the separation between him and his dad. What he didn’t count on is his changing feelings when he sees Cami as a kind woman instead of his former adversary.
When Cami’s son blindsides them both during the Christmas season, is their reunion at risk or will it grow stronger?
My Thoughts: A wonderful book just in time for the holidays! This book was an enjoyable read that is full of many lessons. This novel is not only about family, forgiveness and letting go, but also about bullying and what it can create. Bullying, name calling is something I believe we have all faced at one time in our lives. Beautifully written with a flowing storyline that keeps the reader interested.
The characters are interesting, down to earth and easy to relate to. This is an enjoyable romance novel with lessons to learn that the reader can read during the holiday season or any time of the year! I look forward to reading more from Elaine Stock.
Awix (3310 KP) rated Wonder Woman (2017) in Movies
Feb 10, 2018 (Updated Feb 10, 2018)
Would've liked to see the Invisible Plane. So to speak.
The world reacts with due amazement as a mysterious group of film-makers breaks into the offices of Warner Brothers and manages to produce a really good movie without Zack Snyder noticing. We can speculate all day about just how this happened, but my inclination personally is to not look a gift horse in the mouth and simply enjoy the best DC-based movie since Christopher Nolan parted company with Batman.
There's something very refreshing about the way laborious franchise concerns are firmly put on the back burner, and all the focus is kept on telling a good, strong story. The decision to change the setting to the First World War (apparently made to avoid comparisons with the first Captain America movie) proves to be a really smart one, giving the film its own tone and atmosphere, and the story is well-paced with great character development. It's now hard to imagine anyone other than Gal Gadot playing Wonder Woman, and even Chris Pine is not too annoying for once.
Watching Wonder Woman feels a bit like travelling back in time to a point when summer blockbusters were less calculated, grasping, and egregiously thick-headed. My advice to DC would be to give the security staff a nice long paid holiday and hope the makers of Wonder Woman come back and do it again.
There's something very refreshing about the way laborious franchise concerns are firmly put on the back burner, and all the focus is kept on telling a good, strong story. The decision to change the setting to the First World War (apparently made to avoid comparisons with the first Captain America movie) proves to be a really smart one, giving the film its own tone and atmosphere, and the story is well-paced with great character development. It's now hard to imagine anyone other than Gal Gadot playing Wonder Woman, and even Chris Pine is not too annoying for once.
Watching Wonder Woman feels a bit like travelling back in time to a point when summer blockbusters were less calculated, grasping, and egregiously thick-headed. My advice to DC would be to give the security staff a nice long paid holiday and hope the makers of Wonder Woman come back and do it again.
Fishing for Bodies
In order to help her family deal with their grief, Flavia, her two older sisters, and the family’s servant Dogger have been shipped off on holiday. They are supposed to be enjoying several peaceful days of boating, and Dogger has just happened to pick a location where a vicar poisoned three ladies in his congregation with the communion wine. While Flavia is thinking about this crime, she is letting her hand drift in the water and suddenly grabs something. Instead of the fish she thinks it might be, she discovers it’s a body. Was there foul play? Can Flavia figure out what happened to the corpse?
Series fans, like myself, will be anxious to get this book to find out what is happening to Flavia and her family. We get those updates quite early and then settle in for the latest mystery. The characters are in top form; I loved the develop on Dogger especially. The new characters are sharp, and Flavia charms as always. However, the mystery was poor. We get a strange portion of the book where Flavia is imaging something that happened a few years before. The ending is very weak with guesses instead of facts and deductions. And if Flavia is right on the motive, it is extremely poor. Fans will want to read this one, but definitely start with a stronger book if you are new to the series.
Series fans, like myself, will be anxious to get this book to find out what is happening to Flavia and her family. We get those updates quite early and then settle in for the latest mystery. The characters are in top form; I loved the develop on Dogger especially. The new characters are sharp, and Flavia charms as always. However, the mystery was poor. We get a strange portion of the book where Flavia is imaging something that happened a few years before. The ending is very weak with guesses instead of facts and deductions. And if Flavia is right on the motive, it is extremely poor. Fans will want to read this one, but definitely start with a stronger book if you are new to the series.
Awix (3310 KP) rated The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953) in Movies
May 31, 2018 (Updated May 31, 2018)
American A-bomb test has unexpected consequences when the blast defrosts a frozen, wholly fictional dinosaur; the creature swims off to devastate the nearest city for no particularly well-explained reason. A decent monster movie with a surprisingly gritty tone (by the standards of the genre, anyway); in terms of cultural impact, utterly eclipsed by an unofficial Japanese remake which came out the following year and has had 31 sequels to date.
There are various quirky and tropey bits that will raise a smile for the seasoned viewer of this sort of thing (e.g. the moment when the sweet old supporting character postpones their first holiday in thirty years in order to look for the monster: they might as well have him followed around by a robed man with a scythe), but on the whole it passes the time well enough. There is a sense in which most of the film is just filling time until the climax, when the Rhedosaurus runs amok in the streets of New York, but it does so fairly engagingly; also manages to find a half-decent explanation as to why they don't just bomb the monster to death (Devlin and Emmerich, please take note). Wheeled on for monster-extermination duties is a young Lee van Cleef, who seems slightly annoyed to be appearing in this kind of film. Great fun to watch when you're about seven; stands up pretty well for older viewers, too.
There are various quirky and tropey bits that will raise a smile for the seasoned viewer of this sort of thing (e.g. the moment when the sweet old supporting character postpones their first holiday in thirty years in order to look for the monster: they might as well have him followed around by a robed man with a scythe), but on the whole it passes the time well enough. There is a sense in which most of the film is just filling time until the climax, when the Rhedosaurus runs amok in the streets of New York, but it does so fairly engagingly; also manages to find a half-decent explanation as to why they don't just bomb the monster to death (Devlin and Emmerich, please take note). Wheeled on for monster-extermination duties is a young Lee van Cleef, who seems slightly annoyed to be appearing in this kind of film. Great fun to watch when you're about seven; stands up pretty well for older viewers, too.