Tag: destination weddings

REVIEW: The Wedding Plot by Paula Munier

REVIEW: The Wedding Plot by Paula Munier

Posted on by Jaymie

Summary

Mercy Carr and her Malinois, Elvis, should be consumed with wedding festivities instead of reporting a dead body. But when the spa director at her grandmother’s destination wedding goes missing, Mercy says she’ll check things out. She gets more than she bargained for.

Pretty soon, it’s a toss up over which situation is more troublesome – the pre-wedding antics of the wedding party or the trail of violence that is centered around the resort. But Mercy and Elvis – and Troy and Sugar Bear – are on the case!

Review

This was outstanding!! Mercy and Troy are in a good relationship place in this one, and it sets a lovely tone for the whole book. The dogs are in excellent form here, as always. And the mystery is truly top notch. I even started taking notes, trying to put all the pieces together for myself. (Ended up about 50/50 on my guessing.)

I have enjoyed the Mercy and Elvis mysteries since book one, A Borrowing of Bones. For me, this is the best of the series (so far). In fact, I can say for certain that this will be one of my favorite books of 2022 when the year is done. This book has everything I love – great characters, brilliant plotting, and a quest that propels the characters and the reader forward. I read this start to finish in one day and enjoyed it all. Highly recommend!

Rating: ♥♥♥♥♥+++*

♥♥♥♥♥+++* = Best of the best

REVIEW: Terror in Taffeta by Marla Cooper

Posted on by Jaymie

Summary

Kelsey McKenna is a wedding planner. Destination weddings to vacation spots like Mexico are her specialty. And if she can keep herself from strangling the mother of the bride, she’s going to give Nicole and Vince the wedding of their dreams.

When one of the bridesmaids keels over during the ceremony and dies, the mother of the bride says it is Kelsey’s job to take care of it, including cleaning up the woman’s belongings and arranging for the body. And when the sister of the bride is arrested, Mrs. Abernathy seems to think it’s Kelsey’s job to fix that, too.

A wedding planner with a limited Spanish vocabulary is not particularly well-suited for solving a murder in Mexico. But Kelsey likes Nicole and Vince. She wants to help them have a happy ending to their wedding that has not gone at all to plan. So she’ll keep appeasing Mrs. Abernathy to get to the bottom of this murder – even if it puts Kelsey herself in harm’s way.

Review

This was a fun, fast read. I liked Kelsey and Brody as a sleuthing team. They seem to have a long term relationship and that felt genuine. The fact that Brody is gay means there’s no romantic tension between the two to complicate the relationship which kept things simple on that end.

Plenty of the other relationships in the story are complicated, though! There were several good suspects and motives for the crime to keep me guessing. The mother of the bride made me crazy, and I longed for someone to put her in her place. But she works well as a plot device to keep a wedding planner investigating a murder.

The theme for this cozy – destination wedding planner – is great. It gives options for awesome settings, diverse characters, and plenty of murderous shenanigans. Book 2 is Dying on the Vine and I am adding it to my TBR list!

Rating: ♥♥♥♥