Freedom Giveaway Hop

Since the cozy mystery giveaway was so popular in the last hop, I thought I'd do it one more time. So, for the Freedom Giveaway Hop, you can enter to win up to four of the novels below. This contest is for USA & Canada residents only.


Note: I haven't read all of these novels, but cozy mysteries tend to be free of sex scenes and gore. They also tend have no to minimal explicit bad language.


A Parfait Murder by Wendy Lyn Watson. Read my review to learn more about this cozy mystery novel.

When Tally's cousin Bree spots her deadbeat ex-husband strolling the Lantana County Fair with a fat wallet and a vixen on his arm, she threatens to file for back child support. But when his lawyer is found dead, things get a little sticky. Did Bree serve up a dish of cold, sweet revenge?



Let's Play Dead by Sheila Connolly. Read my review to learn more about this cozy mystery novel.

The new exhibit at the Philadelphia children's museum, Let's Play, isn't meant to be shocking-but when one of the installers is zapped with a fatal electrical charge, it's up to Nell to put her detective skills on display.




Sentenced to Death by Lorna Barrett.

When her friend is killed in a freak accident, Tricia Miles--owner of mystery bookstore Haven't Got a Clue--must use her sleuthing skills to solve a murder mystery that promises to be much more sinister than the books on her shelves.





Books Can Be Deceiving by Jenn McKinlay.

Lindsey is getting into her groove as the director of the Briar Creek Public Library when a New York editor visits town, creating quite a buzz. Lindsey's friend Beth wants to sell the editor her children's book, but Beth's boyfriend, a famous author, gets in the way. When they go to confront him, he's found murdered--and Beth is the prime suspect.


How to Moon a Cat by Rebecca M. Hale.

When Rupert the cat sniffs out a dusty green vase with a toy bear inside, his owner has no doubt this is another of her Uncle Oscar's infamous clues to one of his valuable hidden treasures. Eager to put together the pieces of the puzzle, she's soon heading to Nevada City with her two cats, having no idea that this road trip will put her life in danger.




A Killing in Antiques by Mary Moody.

Treasure hunting is not for the faint of heart. Luckily, Lucy St. Elmo, owner of the Cape Cod antiques shop St. Elmo Fine Antiques, has more than enough heart. Lucy's long-time friend is killed with a strip of lace at Brimfield, the largest outdoor antiques and collectibles show in all of New England. Silent Billy is arrested. While Lucy combs the market for treasures, she starts collecting clues to clear her friend's name.



Dire Threads by Janet Bolin.

Willow Vanderling's quaint new embroidery shop is not a hit with the local zoning commissioner. He's denied her request to renovate the charming cottage behind the shop, and then he tricks some tourists into signing a petition to knock it down to make way for an ATV trail. Willow's furious and everyone knows it, which is a bad thing when he turns up dead in her yard.




Louisa and the Missing Heiress by Anna Maclean. Read my review to learn more about this historical mystery novel.

Boston, 1854. Long before she achieves fame as the author of Little Women, Louisa May Alcott is writing stories of a more lurid nature, inspired by her fascination with the dark and mysterious. When the body of her dear friend, wealthy newlywed Dorothy Wortham, is found floating in Boston's harbor, Louisa is determined to discover who did it. It's well-known that Dorothy's family didn't approve of her husband, a confirmed fortune hunter. But Louisa suspects that some deeper secret lies behind her friend's tragic murder--and she sets out to learn the shocking truth.



To enter the giveaway:

1) you can twitter me saying "Hi @genrereviewer. Enter me in the giveaway for [fill in the titles of the 1-4 books listed above that you want to win]"

OR

2) You can leave a comment to this post asking to be entered and naming which 1-4 books you'd like to win. Please also leave some way for me to contact you--or follow this blog so you can see the winner announcement.


This giveaway ends July 7th at midnight. I'll announce the winner on July 8, 2011 on this blog. The winner will be randomly selected.

If you entered using twitter, I'll send you a @ or DM telling you of your win and asking where to send the book. If you entered using the blog comments, you'll need to leave your e-mail address so I can contact you or check back to see if you won so you can e-mail me your mailing address. If the winner hasn't responded with a mailing address within seven days, I reserve the right to pick a new winner.

I hope everyone has fun with this!


The blogs participating in the Freedom Giveaway Hop:

Death at the Chateau Bremont by M. L. Longworth

Death at the Chateau Bremont by M. L. Longworth ISBN-13: 9780143119524 Trade Paperback: 320 pages Publisher: Penguin Group Released: June 28, 2011

Source: Unrequested review copy from the publisher.

Book Description, my take:
Filmmaker and nobleman Etienne de Bremont falls to his death from a high window of the family château near the idyllic town of Aix-en-Provence, France. Antoine Verlaque, the charming chief magistrate of Aix who'll date practically any good-looking female, decides to join in the investigation since several of Etienne's relatives suspect murder. When he discovers that his ex-girlfriend, law professor Marine Bonnet, had been a close friend of the Bremonts, he uses that as an excuse to spend some time with her (though she's got a boyfriend).

When not at cigar clubs, dining at restaurants, or visiting the local winery to stock up, they investigate Etienne's death, which is soon followed by the murder of another family member. There are plenty of people with a motive, but they all have alibis. The question is: is someone lying or are they overlooking someone?


My Review:
Death at the Chateau Bremont is technically a mystery, but it read like a travelogue about Aix, France with a mystery going on in the background. There was no urgency to the mystery, so I felt very little suspense. The characters were varied, complex, and flawed. The story was mainly about how Judge Verlaque (who's not the courtroom type of judge) and his ex-girlfriend are still attracted to each other despite how Verlaque is constantly critical of her. While realistic, I was rooting for them to not get back together.

The story was full of details about Aix, France--both the attractions (sight-seeing areas, famous artwork, etc.), and the daily life. There were a lot of details about cigars, fine food, and wine. If you're a fan of those, then you'll probably enjoy this book.

Unfortunately, I don't care about those three things. The high level of uninteresting-to-me detail slowed the pacing down to a crawl. With so much detail, it was hard to tell what would play a critical role later, so I stopped trying to solve the mystery. While eventually we did get clues that pointed to the whodunit, that part didn't really kick in until near the end. My mom (who also read the story) said she thought the book had so many daily-life details because there was so little to the actual mystery.

There were some words in French, and some of it was obvious from context or explained. There were no graphic sex scenes. There was some explicit and some "he cussed" style bad language. Overall, I didn't find this mystery very interesting, but I suspect mystery-lovers who are cigar-wine-and-fine-food fans would enjoy it.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.


Excerpt from Chapter One
Saint-Antonin, France
April 17, 5:30 P.M.

Verlaque stood in front of the caretaker's house. It was a medieval cottage; its thick walls made of golden, rough-hewed stone that glowed in the late afternoon light. The windows were small, to keep out the summer heat, and their wooden shutters were painted a faded gray-blue. Behind Verlaque loomed the mountain. He remembered what Paul Cezanne had said of the montagne Sainte-Victoire--that he could move his easel half a meter and see a totally different mountain. Verlaque tried it now, shifting his heavy body slightly to the right. It worked. The spiky top of one of the mountain's many limestone knobs--its south flank resembled a dinosaur's back--came into view. A shadow suddenly floated cross the peak, and its color changed from dusty rose to gray.

He turned back around and looked at the chateau, not really a chateau but a bastide--a country home built by Aix-en-Provence's wealthy seventeenth-century citizens, who every July would leave their downtown mansions and make their way, servants in tow, to the cooler countryside. It was cold up here--although less than ten kilometers from Aix, Saint-Antonin was five hundred meters above sea level--and Verlaque realized that he had left his jacket in the car.

And the winner is...

It's time to announce the winner of the Midsummer's Eve Giveaway Hop cozy mystery giveaway. Including Twitter entries, 87 people entered. Using a random number generator and numbering the entrants in the order I received them, the winner is:


Tammy
who won: Foulplay at the PTA, Square Root of Murder, and Lets Play Dead.


Congratulations! I'll be contacting you for your address.

For those who didn't win, you can always buy a copy of these books from your favorite bookstore or see if they have them at your local library.

Pieces of Light by Julie Cave

Pieces of Light by Julie Cave ISBN-13: 9780890516089 Trade Paperback: 304 pages Publisher: Master Books Released: June 6, 2011

Source: Review copy from the publisher.

Book Description, Modified from Back Cover:
Washington D.C. is gripped with fear at the hands of a deadly serial bomber. Churches are being bombed during their Sunday morning services, and lives have been lost. Former FBI agent Dinah Harris is asked by her old FBI partner to act as a consultant on the case. Also working with them is a handsome FBI bomb expert. He and Dinah are interested in each other, but Dinah wonders how quickly he'll run when he learns about her past mistakes and current struggles.

As the investigation progresses, it becomes clear that the bomber is angry at Christians for letting him down when he was in desperate need of help as a child. Now he's decided to direct his anger and urge for violence into a bombing spree that will show the world what hypocrites Christians are. Will the bomber complete his deadly goal or can Dinah stop him before more people are hurt?


My Review:
Pieces of Light is a Christian suspense novel. This book was the third in a series, but you don't need to read the previous novels to understand this one...though you'll probably like the ongoing characters better if you have. Also, this one didn't spoil the mysteries in the previous novels.

The suspense was built nicely by having Dinah and the FBI try to stop the bomber before another church was bombed and more people died. There was also some suspense about how her relationship with the handsome guy would work out. Though the bomber wasn't named from the beginning, the author wasn't trying very hard to hide "whodunit." There were only two possible suspects (from the reader's point of view), and only one would connect the plot threads together.

Actually, the novel felt disjointed because there were several seemingly unrelated plot threads going on. The purpose of one thread seemed solely to argue against the political agenda promoting "separation of church and state." Even the child abuse element was pushed to the point that the purpose seemed more to raise awareness about the results of child abuse than simply provide a driving motivation for the bomber.

Several of the main characters were complex and dealt with realistic personal struggles (like being abused). However, the reoccurring characters weren't really developed and would probably come across as simplistic if you haven't read the previous novels. For example, in this novel, the bomber had a valid and developed reason to hate Christians, but the Senator seemed to hate Christians, be greedy, etc., "just because."

Dinah was a Christian. She engaged in daily Bible study, small group Bible study, and an occasional prayer. While we're told her relationship with Christ is vital to her life, we don't see that so much in this novel as in the previous one.

I'll mention that I also had a "believability" problem near the end. I can't believe that a leader of a SWAT team, when faced with the choice of injury to two civilians or injury to his team members would immediately and unhesitatingly plan for the civilians to be hurt instead of his team.

There was no sex or bad language. Overall, I'd recommend this interesting novel to those who have read the previous novels in the series.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.


Excerpt from Chapter One
Sussex 1 State Prison
Waverly, Virginia
Prisoner Number: 10734
Death Row

I am on death row and they say I deserve to be here. I suppose I agree. I don’t really know. I don’t have any feelings about it. I know I killed some people, and that’s why I’m here.

I live in a cell that feels like the size of a postage stamp, but at least I’m by myself. I have my books, a television, and some paper on which to write. I have my thoughts, which are strangely muted as though they have jumped into someone else’s head and I’m eavesdropping. They’ve been that way ever since they arrested me. Before that, my thoughts were all mine and I could hear them just fine.

Apparently, this didn’t help me during the trial. The prosecutor called me a “cunning, cold killer who took great pleasure in planning the details of his innocent victim's deaths.” The judge told me that my unemotional response to the guilty verdict read out by the jury foreman “chilled him to the bone.” Even the newspaper, brought by my family when they visited the first time, had a picture of my blank face with the headline: “No Remorse Shown by Bomber.” "Why didn’t you show any remorse?" my family asked me. "Why not at least apologize"?

Because I don’t feel remorse. I don’t feel guilt. I don’t feel sorry. I feel nothing. Somebody has hit the mute button on me and I no longer can communicate the way I used to.

I’ve heard the rumors about me — that I’m a sociopath, that I’m angry and hatred-fueled, that I’m mentally impaired because I have no conscience.

I have felt anger, hatred, frustration, guilt, and even love before all this happened. I used to be a fully functioning, reasonably normal human being. I think that pieces of me are dying slowly, so that by the time my execution date rolls around, I’ll be almost dead anyway. There are pieces of light inside of me, slowly extinguishing themselves, one by one.

Read more using Google Preview.

Midsummer's Eve Giveaway Hop

As a part of the Midsummer's Eve Giveaway Hop, you can enter to win up to four of the novels below. This contest is for USA & Canada residents only.

Note: I haven't read all of these novels, but cozy mysteries tend to be free of sex scenes and gore. They also tend have no to minimal explicit bad language.


Foul Play at the PTA by Laura Alden. Read my review to learn more about this cozy mystery novel.

PTA meetings at Tarver Elementary School can get pretty heated. But after parent Sam Helmstetter is strangled in his car following a meeting, mom and PTA secretary Beth Kennedy and her best friend Marina fear there may be a cold-blooded killer in the group.


A Parfait Murder by Wendy Lyn Watson. Read my review to learn more about this cozy mystery novel.

When Tally's cousin Bree spots her deadbeat ex-husband strolling the Lantana County Fair with a fat wallet and a vixen on his arm, she threatens to file for back child support. But when his lawyer is found dead, things get a little sticky. Did Bree serve up a dish of cold, sweet revenge?


Let's Play Dead by Sheila Connolly.

The new exhibit at the Philadelphia children's museum, Let's Play, isn't meant to be shocking-but when one of the installers is zapped with a fatal electrical charge, it's up to Nell to put her detective skills on display.





The Square Root of Murder by Ada Madison.

Dr. Sophie Knowles teaches math at Henley College in Massachusetts, but when a colleague turns up dead, it's up to her to find the killer before someone else gets subtracted.





Sentenced to Death by Lorna Barrett.

When her friend is killed in a freak accident, Tricia Miles--owner of mystery bookstore Haven't Got a Clue--must use her sleuthing skills to solve a murder mystery that promises to be much more sinister than the books on her shelves.




Books Can Be Deceiving by Jenn McKinlay.

Lindsey is getting into her groove as the director of the Briar Creek Public Library when a New York editor visits town, creating quite a buzz. Lindsey's friend Beth wants to sell the editor her children's book, but Beth's boyfriend, a famous author, gets in the way. When they go to confront him, he's found murdered--and Beth is the prime suspect.


How to Moon a Cat by Rebecca M. Hale.

When Rupert the cat sniffs out a dusty green vase with a toy bear inside, his owner has no doubt this is another of her Uncle Oscar's infamous clues to one of his valuable hidden treasures. Eager to put together the pieces of the puzzle, she's soon heading to Nevada City with her two cats, having no idea that this road trip will put her life in danger.



To enter the giveaway:

1) you can twitter me saying "Hi @genrereviewer. Enter me in the giveaway for [fill in the titles of the 1-4 books listed above that you want to win]"

OR

2) You can leave a comment to this post asking to be entered and naming which 1-4 books you'd like to win. Please also leave some way for me to contact you--or follow this blog so you can see the winner announcement.


This giveaway ends June 24th at midnight. The winner will be randomly selected. I'll announce the winner on June 25 on this blog.

If you entered using twitter, I'll send you a @ or DM telling you of your win and asking where to send the book. If you entered using the blog comments, you'll need to leave your e-mail address so I can contact you or check back to see if you won so you can e-mail me your mailing address. If the winner hasn't responded with a mailing address within seven days, I reserve the right to pick a new winner.

I hope everyone has fun with this!


The blogs participating in the Midsummer's Eve Giveaway Hop:

And the winner is...

I apologize for not getting this up yesterday. But now it's time to announce the two winners of Missing Persons by Clare O'Donohue. Including Twitter entries, 14 people entered. Using a random number generator and numbering the entrants in the order I received them, the winner is:


Marjorie

and

Mona


Congratulations! I'll be contacting you for your address.

For those who didn't win, you can always buy a copy of this book from your favorite bookstore or see if they have it at your local library.

Foul Play at the PTA by Laura Alden

Foul Play at the PTA by Laura Alden ISBN-13: 978-0-451-23408-7 Mass Market Paperback: 320 pages Publisher: Obsidian Mystery Released: July 5, 2011

Source: Review copy from the publisher.

Book Description from Back Cover:
PTA meetings at Tarver Elementary School can get pretty heated. But after parent Sam Helmstetter is strangled in his car following a meeting, mom and PTA secretary Beth Kennedy and her best friend Marina fear there may be a cold-blooded killer in the group.

Meanwhile, rumors spread that Beth's newest employee at er children's bookstore is the murderer. Yvonne served time for a similar crime, but DNA evidence eventually proved her innocent. As the new PTA vice president organizes a boycott of the bookstore and the real killer roams the streets of Rynwood, Wisconsin, Beth realizes she'll need to stick her own neck out to catch an elusive strangler...


My Review:
Foul Play at the PTA is a cozy mystery. It's the second book in the series, but you don't need to read the first to understand this one. Some events from the first novel are spoiled, but not the mystery.

The characters were complex and varied, and Beth dealt with realistic struggles (financial worries, raising her kids, dealing with an ex-husband, etc.). However, the main character trait for Beth, Marina, and a few other characters was exaggerated to the edge of what was believable, probably to create humor. On the other hand, I normally wouldn't like or accept a mystery novel main character who was very non-confrontational and a chronic worrier, but I loved how Beth would stand up for what was right even when people tried to bully her out of it and she felt scared.

A mild level of suspense was created by the threat to Beth's business (and thus her much-needed income) and by a certain level of physical danger to the characters. I did not guess the whodunit. In a way, it wasn't guessable until near the very end, but I didn't guess right even once the characters were certain. Perhaps that's because they kept being certain about each latest suspect. Also, while I know people will kill for the stupidest reasons, I was never convinced that the motive would realistically result in a killing spree when whodunit could have skipped to the end intent without killing and had a much higher likelihood of succeeding.

This book almost hit a pet peeve when the characters delayed in calling the police when they knew whodunit and were in pursuit. It did hit a minor pet peeve in that two characters were seriously, er, ill, which provided a clue, but one of them suddenly showed no signs of illness (when it would have been inconvenient) and we never found out how the other one ultimately fared.

There was a brief Christian prayer at the Thanksgiving dinner. There was no sex. There were 10 uses of fake bad language. Overall, the mystery was engaging and interesting even if it didn't strike me as particularly realistic.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.


Excerpt from Chapter One
"You've got to get rid of her."

I ignored my best friend. Once again, she was trying to arrange my life for me, and I was much more interested in planning the Thanksgiving menu. Maybe I could swap the butter-laden, sugar-saturated squash for a simple broiled version. But the sugared version was the only kind of squash that Jenna, my eleven-year-old daughter, would eat.

"Beth, are you listening to me?" Marina scrubbed at her temples, frizzling her light red hair. "When was the last time Marcia was worth what you're paying her? It's time for her to go."

"Um." What I really wanted to put on the menu was a platter of cute little Cornish hens instead of a monstrous hormone-laden turkey, but that wouldn't fly with my family. "It won't fly," I murmured, and chuckled at my own stupid joke.

"This isn't funny." Marina waggled plump fingers at me. "Hey, pay attention. What are you doing over there, anyway? Tell me you're not making a list."