Book Review: Death of a Tom Turkey (Hayley Powell Food and Cocktails Mystery, #18) by Lee Hollis

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Death of a Tom Turkey (Hayley Powell Food and Cocktails Mystery, #18)  by Lee Hollis  opens with Tom Farley and his neighbors in a snit because he's the last holdout to sell his house to a property developer who wants to build a resort. When Tom is shot at a pre-Thanksgiving community gathering and hospitalized, Hayley Powell puts her amateur sleuthing skills to good use. Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Publishers for providing me with an Advanced Readers Copy (ARC) of this cozy mystery. I received a copy of this book for free in exchange of my honest opinion and review of the story. I loved the fact that this latest installment of the Hayley Powell Food and Cocktails Mystery  series had a theme around the Thanksgiving holiday and included live turkeys in the plot. It was good to visit some familiar characters. Since this is the eighteenth installment in the series, Lee Hollis didn't go into much detail of the background of those reoccurring characters; however, she...
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Book Review: More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (Scary Stories, #2) by Alvin Schwartz

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more scary stories to tell in the dark alvin schwartz
Since Halloween is right around the corner, I decided to reread a favorite book from my childhood . . . More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (Scary Stories, #2), which is a collection of stories from folklore and retold by Alvin Schwartz.

I first read this book and the other two books in the trilogy, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (Scary Stories, #1) and Scary Stories 3:  More Tales to Chill Your Bones (Scary Stories, #3), in middle school, and I had fond memories of them. I also remember being terribly spooked after reading them, especially by the grotesque illustrations. If memory serves correctly, our teachers weren't thrilled with students reading them.

My favorite stories in this edition are Something Was Wrong and The Wreck. I also enjoyed A Ghost in the Mirror. These were the spookiest of the stories. The latter story made a friend and I try to summon "Bloody Mary", and we completely freaked ourselves out. So, this was a great read for nostalgia reasons.

With that being said, I was terribly disappointed in More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark because it wasn't nearly as good, or as spooky, as I remembered. But, I am an adult now, and I'm not really the target audience for this book. It would likely scare its target audience of kids between the ages of eight years and twelve years because I do remember being creeped out by it when I read it in middle school.

The adult in me gives this book three out of five stars. My middle school self would have likely have given it five out of five stars.

 

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