Meltdown in Christmas River by Meg Muldoon
Series: Christmas River #10
Publisher: Vacant Lot Publishing
Publication Date: December 17, 2017
Format: Ebook
Source: From a Stuff your Kindle Day. Also included on Kindle Unlimited at the time of this posting.
Rating:
Goodreads Synopsis: How do you find a killer when everyone in town has a motive?
That’s the question pie-baker extraordinaire Cinnamon Peters and the rest of the cozy little mountain town of Christmas River are asking this December.
After Moira Stewart — the town’s worst gossip — is found dead of unnatural causes one snowy morning, rumors begin swirling like snowflakes in a blizzard about her unexpected demise.
But not everything is as it seems in Christmas River this holiday season. And in a town where everyone stands to gain from Moira’s death, Cinnamon and her husband Sheriff Brightman find themselves stumbling into dangerous and deadly territory.
Because this December, the weather outside is frightful…And so is the murder.
Review: I picked this book up during a Stuff Your Kindle freebie day, and did not know that it was #10 in a series. That said, it was fine to read on its own, but you could tell that there were some things that happened in previous books that might have made it easier to understand. Especially around the relationships and town dynamics overall.
The story itself followed Cinnamon, a baker in Christmas River. While the town is cozy, there has been a murder and Cinnamon found the body, and now she is a suspect. The body was of the town gossip, Moira. So anyone could have done it.
I liked the story overall, but at times it really felt over done. There were full sections that I am not sure were really needed. For example, there was a lot of talk about weight from the baker... it is the holiday season, she is a baker - there are pies. I understand that we all need to be more understanding about our bodies, but it was just too much.
The mystery itself is kinda a modern take on Agatha Christie's style where it all just kind of comes together in the end. While I like that style it was also not done as well as those classics. I did like the clue drops and surprises throughout the book though, they were well placed and kept the pacing moving steadily. It was just a steady pace though, nothing I wanted to fly through, just enough to keep me chugging along.
In all honesty I had to put this book down for a day and pick something else up. While cozy and holiday themed, it was taking longer than I had hoped to get into it. The characters seemed a bit one-dimentional, but that could have been because book 10... not 1...
So overall it was good/ok. I don't think I will pick up more in this series, and maybe I might have liked it better if this was book 1 and not 10 (and I was more invested in the town, sorry I keep noting it, I was shoked to learn this was #10!). If you are looking for a cozy, Christmas themed mystery, this one might be for you. It is a slower pace and so if you need a leasure read, you should pick it up.
