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csd17's review
3.0
She's written better. All the fun stuff happened in the beginning and the ending was predictable.
reader88's review against another edition
fast-paced
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
3.5
skullfullofbooks's review against another edition
3.0
A quick, easy cozy read that doesn't ask much mentally. I am bummed that this didn't focus more on the mystery and that half of the book was about the holiday parade. I mean even a death didn't make Meg consider stopping the parade for the investigation, which seems weird to me and made it hard to fully immerse myself in the story.
While the characters were fun to read, they were paper thin and made their own cliche proud. I don't like the endings where the murderer is discovered and a standoff is made which also seems unrealistic. It is hard for me to care about characters that haven't given me much reason to care at all throughout the entire book.
If you're looking for a simple, Christmas themed read for the holidays, then this fits the bill. I don't think this would make any big waves in your life, though.
While the characters were fun to read, they were paper thin and made their own cliche proud. I don't like the endings where the murderer is discovered and a standoff is made which also seems unrealistic. It is hard for me to care about characters that haven't given me much reason to care at all throughout the entire book.
If you're looking for a simple, Christmas themed read for the holidays, then this fits the bill. I don't think this would make any big waves in your life, though.
skinnypenguin's review against another edition
4.0
Another fun book in this series. Meg and Michael are celebrating their first Christmas as a married couple and Michael is trying to get tenure at the college where he works and Meg bows to pressure by a prominent member of the tenure committee to organize the Caerphilly holiday parade. They have a yard full of parade floats, animals, bands, and lots of people all getting ready for the parade. The man playing Santa is murdered and even though Meg doesn't want to actively hunt for the murderer she ends up helping out.
Meg's family is involved as usual in many of the town's activities and the parade. There is a snow storm which strands quite a few people at Meg's house for awhile. The chief of police is there and he is trying to figure out who the killer is. There are quite a few suspects as the victim had been blackmailing people. Meg is trying to sort thru the possible suspects. The animals figure prominently in the story as in previous stories and some of the other characters have their own quirks and are a bit bumbly but lots of fun.
Meg's family is involved as usual in many of the town's activities and the parade. There is a snow storm which strands quite a few people at Meg's house for awhile. The chief of police is there and he is trying to figure out who the killer is. There are quite a few suspects as the victim had been blackmailing people. Meg is trying to sort thru the possible suspects. The animals figure prominently in the story as in previous stories and some of the other characters have their own quirks and are a bit bumbly but lots of fun.
expendablemudge's review against another edition
4.0
Rating: 4* of five
This delicious romp is part of a daffy mystery series featuring the Rubenesque Meg Langslow, daughter of a chic, slim, stylish and scary Virginia aristocrat mother and a simple, single-minded doctor father who never grew up (thank goodness). She's married to an ex-soap hunk and cult TV fantasy villain actor-turned-drama-professor at a small, exclusive liberal arts college located a few miles from her hometown of Yorktown, Virginia. Her extensive extended family includes a cousin who lives his life as a forensic technician from inside a gorillla suit; a cousin whose wool-headed New Age philosophical maunderings cause most of the family acute embarrassment; a younger brother who, like her father, never grew up but managed to make himself rich by starting a MMO-RPG company.
Getting the picture? It's a screwball comedy-cum-mystery, with a couple of befuddled normals at its whirling center. Think "Bringing Up Baby"--you know, the Cary Grant-Katharine Hepburn movie with the leopard and the madcap heiress?--and you've got the gist. And it's working for Andrews! This is the ninth of ten, to date, books in the series.
I commented once, on an LT thread now long buried, that I read mysteries to satisfy my orderly side. (The Divine Miss contends I *have* no orderly side, usually with a wrinkled nose and a wince as she looks into my bedroom.) This series of mysteries, despite the winsome chaos of the plot, scratches that bump with just the right touch. I love the characters, I willingly believe that (fictional) Caerphilly County, Virginia, is run by the lunatics instead of the asylum attendants, because *things go right* there. The right people are rewarded and punished. The right solutions are found to problems, and are implemented with a nudge and a wink at the law.
It's the way I wish Nassau County, New York, was run. It ain't, for the record, even close.
So when the chance came to join the Holiday (not Christmas!) parade and festivities in Caerphilly, Virginia, it would have taken a stronger man than I am to resist the siren call. I read the book in about four hours of snorting, giggling, howling fun. And that's the downside of Andrews's simple, direct prose: It flows like water over the eyeballs, nothing to impede the story being told, no snaggle in the current, just fast-flowing water from the Holy Well of Humor.
The humorless need not even bother looking at the book. The po-faced classics snobs should pass by the shelf, wincing disdainfully. The pseudo-erudite high-culture vultures stand warned off. The rest of us will be over here, in the corner, laughing fit to bust.
This delicious romp is part of a daffy mystery series featuring the Rubenesque Meg Langslow, daughter of a chic, slim, stylish and scary Virginia aristocrat mother and a simple, single-minded doctor father who never grew up (thank goodness). She's married to an ex-soap hunk and cult TV fantasy villain actor-turned-drama-professor at a small, exclusive liberal arts college located a few miles from her hometown of Yorktown, Virginia. Her extensive extended family includes a cousin who lives his life as a forensic technician from inside a gorillla suit; a cousin whose wool-headed New Age philosophical maunderings cause most of the family acute embarrassment; a younger brother who, like her father, never grew up but managed to make himself rich by starting a MMO-RPG company.
Getting the picture? It's a screwball comedy-cum-mystery, with a couple of befuddled normals at its whirling center. Think "Bringing Up Baby"--you know, the Cary Grant-Katharine Hepburn movie with the leopard and the madcap heiress?--and you've got the gist. And it's working for Andrews! This is the ninth of ten, to date, books in the series.
I commented once, on an LT thread now long buried, that I read mysteries to satisfy my orderly side. (The Divine Miss contends I *have* no orderly side, usually with a wrinkled nose and a wince as she looks into my bedroom.) This series of mysteries, despite the winsome chaos of the plot, scratches that bump with just the right touch. I love the characters, I willingly believe that (fictional) Caerphilly County, Virginia, is run by the lunatics instead of the asylum attendants, because *things go right* there. The right people are rewarded and punished. The right solutions are found to problems, and are implemented with a nudge and a wink at the law.
It's the way I wish Nassau County, New York, was run. It ain't, for the record, even close.
So when the chance came to join the Holiday (not Christmas!) parade and festivities in Caerphilly, Virginia, it would have taken a stronger man than I am to resist the siren call. I read the book in about four hours of snorting, giggling, howling fun. And that's the downside of Andrews's simple, direct prose: It flows like water over the eyeballs, nothing to impede the story being told, no snaggle in the current, just fast-flowing water from the Holy Well of Humor.
The humorless need not even bother looking at the book. The po-faced classics snobs should pass by the shelf, wincing disdainfully. The pseudo-erudite high-culture vultures stand warned off. The rest of us will be over here, in the corner, laughing fit to bust.
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