Overview:
It’s Christmastime three hundred sixty-five days a year in Rudolph, New York, and as Christmas Day approaches, shop owner Merry Wilkinson is enjoying a rare evening off at the Yuletide Inn when she runs into owners Grace and Jack Olsen. With Jack's health failing, Merry is relieved to hear that his son Gord will be taking over the day-to-day running of the Inn.
But then Gord reveals that his new plans have no room for Christmas at the Inn, and Merry and the other shopkeepers start to fret about the effect a bland franchise hotel could have on their livelihoods.
When Gord is found stabbed to death, there’s an entire town of potential suspects—and it’s up to Merry to find whoever brought homicide home for the holidays...
My Review:
This is the second entry in the Year-Round Christmas Mystery series and the sequel to Rest Ye Murdered Gentleman. If you read my review on the first book, you’ll know that while I enjoyed the theme, the characters were just too over-the-top for my taste. There was some character development in this one but they still came off as caricatures as opposed to real people.
In this book, Jack (owner of the Yuletide Inn) has a heart attack and lands in the hospital. His son Gord (from his first marriage), who has been living in California, graciously agrees to come to Rudolph to run the Inn while Grace (Jack’s wife) is taking care of Jack. He immediately begins changing things and even tries to sell the Inn without the consent of Grace. It’s not long before he’s murdered and there’s no shortage of suspects as half the town hates him and thinks he’s going to ruin the Christmas spirit. Number one on the list is Noel, Merry’s father. Pretty obvious, since he threatened Gord in front of witnesses and is soon arrested so Merry takes it upon herself to “help” the police with their investigation.
Though the suspect list is long, it is pretty obvious who the guilty party is and I am curious to see how the fallout from that will evolve.
Like I said in the beginning, the characters are still over-the-top but we learn that Aline (Merry’s mother) has some spunk and isn’t totally a former opera diva still trying to live her glory days. Jackie (Merry’s part time help) is still annoying as all get out and poor Mattie keeps getting shoved in his crate.
I really want to like this series. I do. It has an interesting and fun premise but I am having such a hard time with the characters. The third one titled Hark the Herald Angels Slay comes out November 28, 2017 but I won’t pick it up right away. I’ll wait until I hit a slow patch when there’s nothing else out that I want. I do hope that things improve because there were some things that happened in this book that intrigued me enough to want to keep reading which is a good sign.
Have you read this series? If so, what did you think? Am I being too harsh?
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