Helpful Score: 2
A nice cozy set in a true American castle. When a scandal drives Merry out of New York to her newly inherited ancestors' castle in up state, she decides to clean it up and market it to potential corporate buyers. Her two best friends, a model and a financial wizard, move in to help, but murder intervenes. Is the castle cursed? Does that cute sheriff really dislike her so much?
Richard M. (algernon99) -
This is the second book in this series. To give you an idea of how much I liked it, let me tell you that I ordered it from Amazon and paid real money for it, rather than wait for my turn to come up on the wish list here on PaperBackSwap. I wanted to read book #2 right now.
Merry Wynter has inherited a sort of American castle and its extensive forested grounds in rural New York state from her eccentric uncle. In book #1, some odd things happened and were satisfactorily resolved. I liked that book because it had a different feeling and atmosphere from your typical cozy mystery. Merry is a unique character--a young widow whose former fashion designer diva employer wrongfully terminated her and ruined her reputation in the industry.
So Merry goes to the castle to see what she can do with it. She has a talent for baking, especially muffins, which she starts selling in the community. But mostly she worries about how to fix up and sell the castle.
Of course, a complex situation results in murder on her castle grounds. Again, the characters involved all have a slightly off-kilter (in both good and bad ways) feel about them.
The unusual atmosphere, unique characters, and situations that are just different from what we read all the time make these books memorable and enjoyable for me.
Merry Wynter has inherited a sort of American castle and its extensive forested grounds in rural New York state from her eccentric uncle. In book #1, some odd things happened and were satisfactorily resolved. I liked that book because it had a different feeling and atmosphere from your typical cozy mystery. Merry is a unique character--a young widow whose former fashion designer diva employer wrongfully terminated her and ruined her reputation in the industry.
So Merry goes to the castle to see what she can do with it. She has a talent for baking, especially muffins, which she starts selling in the community. But mostly she worries about how to fix up and sell the castle.
Of course, a complex situation results in murder on her castle grounds. Again, the characters involved all have a slightly off-kilter (in both good and bad ways) feel about them.
The unusual atmosphere, unique characters, and situations that are just different from what we read all the time make these books memorable and enjoyable for me.
While I am sure other cozy lovers may truly enjoy this second installment in the Merry Muffin series, I was not a real fan. I enjoyed the first in the series, but the whole picture is just not enough for it to continue on, in my humble opinion. Yes, it has the main components of fun cozy's, the mystery, the castle, the food interest being muffins. Maybe I'm just muffin-ed out, but it failed to hold my interest. I need a new cozy series.
I would suggest reading the first in this series before reading this one, as the plot is connected to book 1 and things that happened in book 1 are mentioned quite a bit.
