Wreck the Halls: A Home Repair Is Homicide Mystery (Hardcover)

Then there's another death. This one appears to have been a heart attack, but Jake and Ellie feel it was murder and related to Merle's murder. With an attempted murder, things really start heating up.

Christmas is just weeks away. Jake had planned to rehabilitate her old house this winter but now she's on the trail of a killer. There are so many suspects. Ellie and Jake spend their time checking each one out and eventually they end up in danger themselves.

Jake is also a newlywed with a teenage son. Her ex lives in town and keeps coming to her for help with his new relationship. He is a very self-centered man.

This author has created a wonderful town -- Eastport, ME -- with fabulous characters. They are very believable and act just like I would expect people in a small town to act. Her plots are always very well constructed and I have a hard time figuring out who did it and why.

I have read 1 other book in this series. I highly recommend this book and the whole series. This a true cozy series.

I like the friendship between Jake and Ellie that has developed. I hope the relationship of Jake and Wade is more prominent in other books. She spends more time talking to her ex in this book. I'd like to get to know her son Sam better. I think in some of the earlier books he plays a bigger part. One reason she moved to this town was to get him away from his old friends and drugs in the big city.

I really disliked the constant interruptions in the telling of the story. Jacobia and her friend Ellie couldn't have a 2-minute conversation without Jacobia going off about her problems with her house. Did I need to know about her possible skunk problems?

What is Jacobia's problem with non-smoking restaurants? I'm not a health Nazi because I don't like people smoking near me.

The last chapter explains all the ins and outs of the murders and their causes. If the book had been better written, I would have realized most of this once the murderer was uncovered.

There are better Christmas mysteries to read.

I read half the book. And was so bored I gave up. Nothing was happening, and the plot and characters were as stark and drab as the Maine late-Fall landscape. I finally decided that life was too short to suffer my way through this book.

Graves tries to coast on her location and witty main character, but it's taken her about as far as she's going to go.