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: Tricky Twenty-Two (Stephanie Plum, #22) by Janet Evanovich

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book review tricky twenty two janet evanovich stephanie plum

Tricky Twenty-Two (Stephanie Plum, #22) by Janet Evanovich opens with Stephanie Plum needing to apprehend Ken "Gobbles" Globovic, who is a fraternity called Zeta at Kiltman College, but he has gone into hiding. On top of that, Doug Linken, who has hired Rangeman to protect him, has been killed. What is the connection between Gobbles and Doug, and how is Stephanie going to solve this mystery?

When I first started reading this installment of the Stephanie Plum book series, I thought I was going to end up disliking Tricky Twenty-Two because of what happened in the beginning of the story. However, I ended up absolutely loving it. The story felt a little different the previous stories, and Stephanie didn't seem quite so inept at her job as a bounty hunter. 

Lula cracked me up with her bedazzling and wearing of flea collars . . . you'll have to read the book to find out why she does this and thinks she's going to be the next Martha Stewart. I think this was one of the first times in several books that she doesn't absolutely get on my last nerve, so that was extremely refreshing. There was no Randy Biggs in this story line, so my worries of him being in every book from now on were for naught . . . yay!

And, Stephanie's mom, Ellen, has had some major character development in this installment. I actually am beginning to like her, which is surprising. I think readers will be just as pleasantly delighted as I was by this character growth. 

The ending of Tricky Twenty-Two (Stephanie Plum, #22) has gotten my hopes up that Stephanie will finally settle down, get married, and have kids. However, I'm trying not to get too excited by the ending. All in all, it was a great read, even with it not being as fast paced as previous books in the series, and I gave it five out of five stars.

 


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