A B&B that doesn’t serve breakfast, a dead body, and something strange in the room at the end of the corridor . . . Pepper knew moving back home wasn’t going to be easy.
Pepper Jasper moves from Sydney to the cozy town of Lighthouse Bay, answering a desperate plea from her aunts to help with their failing Bed and Breakfast business.
She discovers her aunts are more eccentric than she … business.
She discovers her aunts are more eccentric than she remembered, the Bed and Breakfast does not serve breakfast, and the cottages for lease have strange themes. And what’s more, within minutes of her arrival, she stumbles across a dead body.
Pepper soon has her hands full, contending with a murder mystery, irritating guests including the enigmatic Lucas O’Callaghan who is convinced every woman wants to fall into his arms, and her aunts, who are hiding more than one deep secret.
Who – or what! – lurks in the forbidden room at the end of the dark corridor?
And why do the aunts insist she drink copious quantities of special label wine?
Find out what awaits Pepper Jasper at Mugwort Manor.
more
Again, cozy mystery, nameen
my first aussie cosy mystery…I would like to see more.
I didn’t think it was terribly good. It was witty but that was all.
A cute book that I read twice. That automatically makes it at least a 3-star. It is unusual and I liked the characters. It is “on the edge” of a lot of things … it’s a bit romantic, has fun characters, made me smile, and kept me reading. It is an easy read, which keeps me from giving it four stars. It is just on the edge of being action-packed. I’d actually call it amusing, rather than funny … If you want a lot of depth, it isn’t here. If you want something that is intense, it doesn’t quite make it. But if you want a little bit of mystery along with a teasing amount of romance and some characters that you’ll enjoy … it’s got all that.
The theme of the book is interesting. Girl can’t find a job, moves in with elderly aunts aft her parents death, dead body falls through the sky light, you know, normal stuff. Several twist and turns to find out who done it. There are some editing “skips” in the book and a few words are not used properly but on the whole a fun read if you re able to fill in the story misses.
The witch/vampire stuff was kind of fun
Not a fan of books about witches, etc
Back ground of charters needs work
In the midst of a worldwide pandemic, I needed some light reading. This was an enjoyable read allowing me to escape the stress of life. I also enjoyed the fact that it is set in Australia, so I got a taste of another country. The love story was pretty predictable, at least as far as I am into the book at this time. An enjoyable, light read.
2.5 Stars
I sorta liked the book but found some things frustrating. The flighty Aunts were a bit too cliché and very vague. They never answered questions that were important to their niece and important to moving the story forward.
Examples:
Page 102: “That’s a conversation for another time .”
Page 125: “That’s a conversation for another time .” is said TWICE ON THE SAME PAGE!
Page 131: “I can give you a long summary of the history later.” Later never comes btw.
Page 134: “We’ll talk about it later.” But they don’t!
(All page #’s are from the Nook version I read.)
Valkyrie or Pepper is the main character. Her real name is Valkyrie but goes by Pepper for no apparent reason. “Aunts, everyone else calls me Pepper. The agreement was that if I returned to help, you would call me Pepper, and I could live in one of the cottages” Yet the Aunts always call her Valkyrie. It’s irritating! Pepper/Valkyrie faints. A lot. Get scared? Faint! Get some weird news? Faint! Find out shifters are real? Faint! I’m worried no one is using concussion protocol with her.
I did appreciate that the author explained that this is set in Australia so she would be using Australian spellings for words like neighbour instead of neighbor, etc. She also included Australian slang and terms for everyday things. Again this was extremely nice and probably necessary so she wasn’t constantly emailed about typos. However, I expect an author to write using the vernacular of the country where the story is set and would be irritated if she used American terms like trunk for boot knowing this was set north of Sydney.
Or worse still when an author sets a story in America but uses British or Australian terms for everything. Yes, I’m calling you out again Rebecca Raisin! You are the guiltiest of the guilty doing this. Tsk, tsk!
It’s a cute-ish book and I might read the next in the series hoping it gets better if the book was free for at least only 99 cents.