From the author of Kindle Unlimited All-Star winner, Sweet Hollow Women, comes a new novella featuring characters from Murder at Mistletoe Manor, Carnage at the Christmas Party, and The Port Elspeth Jewelry Making Club!

Klarinda Snow is the innkeeper of Mistletoe Manor in beautiful, remote, Windy Pines, Idaho, where she brings her unique brand of hospitality to the tiny mountain town.

When she finds her inn unexpectedly fully booked on a snowy Tuesday night in November, it brings back memories of a tragedy years before. Before she knows what hit her, she and her trusty team of employees (Myrtle, Pierre, and her new night manager, Josephine), have found themselves back at the task of solving another mystery at Mistletoe Manor!

While this book can be enjoyed as a stand-alone novella, if you plan to read the books in the Windy Pines Mystery series or The Port Elspeth Jewelry Making Club, it’s highly recommended you read those first, as this book contains spoilers that could affect your ability to enjoy them.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Stop. Stop with the dad jokes, he silently begged himself as he trudged up the stairs. Like his heartburn and tension headaches, they’d become another constantly recurring infliction he couldn’t shake.

She’d been blonde and plump, only five feet tall, button-nosed and red-cheeked. The poster child for being underestimated.

She had that comfortably, happily hungover feeling that comes with spending time with someone special. When their presence still seems to be a part of you, even a day later.

And, like many an old man who still thought he was young, he fancied himself to be a bit of a Liam Neeson-type of undercover badass. Even when he was just running out to the hardware store for new weedwacker strings, he liked to act as suspiciously as possible.

My Review:

This tale was a continuation of the Windy Pines cozy mystery series, and although I have only read one of the previous installments I had no difficulty following the story. The quirky cast of characters including the Barbershop Reindeer Sweater Oldies Quartet carried over and expanded considerably with a new group of rude and oddly behaving guests to Klarinda Snow’s inn, the Mistletoe Manor, and the site of a murder in the last installment, which couldn’t have been good for her business.   Poor Klarinda, stumbling upon a frozen corpse, yet again.

The storylines were slowly built with sudden bursts of significant activity, secrets, and revelations. Clues and clever sparks of amusing levity were randomly disbursed with a few hidden like Easter eggs. The overall tone of this tale was more leaden than the last, due to the malaise and rather dispiriting personal issues the visitors were experiencing prior to and during their stays. To my great relief, the author wisely provided a quickly devised yet satisfactory ending to conclude the story on an upbeat, as I must have my HEA lest I begin filling the air with a tirade of invectives while stamping my little foot in pique, and surely no one wants to see that. 😉