Saturday, March 3, 2012

Book Review: Home For A Spell

Author:Madelyn Alt
Title: Home For A Spell
Publisher: Berkley
Publish Date: January 4, 2011
Buy: Amazon
Book Blurb: As the newest witch in Indiana, Maggie O'Neill already has plenty to deal with. So being hobbled by a broken leg doesn't help. Neither does the fact that her best friend and upstairs neighbor is getting ready to tie the knot with her own boyfriend and move away. This leads Maggie to wonder if it isn't time to find herself a new pad.

But when she finds a place, Maggie's dream of new digs turns into a nightmare: the apartment manager is found dead before she can even sign the lease. And Maggie finds herself not only searching for a new home- but for a frightfully clever killer.

Review: This book was Cute with a capital "C." I found this one at my local library and was seduced by the cute cover. This is one of the few series cozies that I've read that made me wish that I had read the other books in the series. This is Book 7 in the A Bewitching Mystery series. It isn't that this book can't stand alone, but I wanted to know more of the back story between Maggie and her ex-boyfriend.

This is a cozy mystery, but it is more cozy than mystery. The mystery just didn't do it for me. It took forever for the murder to happen. What is it with established cozy series doing this anyway? You wait almost half the book before the body turns up? And when it does show up it just wasn't the kind of mystery that had me wondering who the killer was. It was a little easy to guess. It was interesting to read about Locke, and what a creep he really was. It is always good when the victim is a creep, then you don't feel bad that they are dead.

This story felt more like it was about Maggie and the direction she was going in her life. When I read a cozy, I want the mystery. I didn't feel satisfied when the killer was revealed, though the twist that came at the end was a bit surprising. I think I'm going to have to see what the other books were like in the series. I liked the characters, but this book didn't seem developed enough for me.

Rating: 3 flowers


1 comments:

Dalene @ A Date with a Book said...

I've seen this author and wondered about the series. That's too bad about the delay in the murder. Joanne Fluke did the same in some of her later books in her Hannah Swensen series, but I was so caught in the town and relationships that it didn't seem to bother me as much. Thanks for the review :) At least I know there's potential in the series.

 
Blog Design by Use Your Imagination Designs using images from the Tea Time kit and the Saturday Night kit by MK-Designs