Eager to come to terms with her friend’s substance abuse, Norah decides to distract herself by writing the story of her great-grandparents. As Norah becomes caught up in the tales of her sleuthing great-grandparents and their adventures solving mysteries, the present starts to overlap.Soon Norah is caught up in a real-life mystery that could lead her to discover the truth behind her friend, … friend, Mariette’s, addiction. As the pieces fall into place, the evidence points to the possibility of Mariette being drugged without her knowledge. As past and present collide, will Norah find the true culprit and will she be in time to prevent anyone else being hurt?
more
Fun Short Read. Two mysteries in a short fun story. Looking forward to reading the next book in this series. Likable characters that you care about.
I volunteered to read ARC and this is my honest opinion.
Was a good book. Wonderful that it was based on God.
Norah has just lost her GranPa and she can’t help to blame Marietta for it. She is been using drugs and drinking all her life and has caused many accidents. Norah must find a way to forgive her while trying to resolve the mystery about the accident and trying to write a book about a murder from a long time ago nvolving her great-grandparents
This was a fast, fun little book with a pair of mysteries: who killed the main character’s great grandfather’s best friend and who set in motion the events that ended with her grandfather’s death? Perhaps it was the shorter nature of the book, but I didn’t feel a lot of depth of emotion in the story. I also felt like there was a bit too much ‘tell’ and not enough ‘show’. A lot of this book is conversation and not very much description – other than the food. But that all sounds so delicious that I’m starving now. It’s a good start to a new series and I really liked that neither mystery has the answer I was expecting.
An okay Christian cozy mystery, part historical
A case within a case, a book within a book, a story within a story. A large part of the book consists of an old mystery. Norah is writing a novel (well, more a mini-novella) based on old journals written by her great-grandparents.
I’ll judge each part (present and past) separately.
Present
It starts with a lecture on forgiveness, which I totally agreed with BTW. But then the lecture started for a second time and that was just repetitive. More important: the story could use more descriptions, of people and surroundings, houses for instance. Food, now that was described at length! The story needed more things actually happening instead of only talking. Too much conversation, too little else. The mystery: it took forever to get there (it really only starts at page 73 of 93) and when finally it was getting somewhere, before I knew it, it was already over. It got suspenseful and the next sentence is: “…later that evening.” Please just continue with the moment, with the suspense, instead of killing it by jumping forward in time. A missed opportunity!
Past
There was some information given at the beginning that turned out not to be true. Can’t tell you for fear of spoiling. But the end was sort of anticlimactic. But what bothered me most: literally 90% of the story was conversation. Don’t get me wrong, I like conversation, but there needs to be balance. The remaining 10% were just dry facts. No feelings! The story would definitely benefit from way more feelings and thoughts; now it just didn’t seem to come from Paul nor Grace, but an all-knowing narrator! And that seems to me to be a missed opportunity. For instance, when Paul hears about his best friend’s death, he immediately starts talking about him in the past tense. Immediately accepted his death, without being in shock or anything. He didn’t show any emotion. Now that’s not how things work IRL.
Conclusion: this showed great promise, but it just isn’t there yet. Please take this review as constructive criticism. The present did have a clear POV, and the few pages that were better, with more description and less conversation, those I really liked! And once things got going it was really interesting! The book was good enough for me to finish it, with some work I believe this could become a good book.