Spring Brings Another Murder to Rudolph
Despite the fact that this series from Vicki Delany is the Year-Round Christmas Mysteries, most of the books have still taken place in December. I mean, that is peak Christmas season, right? We are actually visiting in spring with A Slay Ride Together with You, the seventh in the series.
If you haven’t found this series before, it stars Merry Wilkinson, a resident of Rudolph, New York. When the industry in the town started to die down, the residence leaned into the name and became a Christmas themed tourist town. Merry herself owns Mrs. Claus’s Treasures, which features fine holiday themed decor items.
As I said, this book takes place in spring, which is a bit slower time in Rudolph. That means it is the perfect time for Merry’s friends Vicky and Mark to get married. They’ve chosen the Saturday before Easter for a small wedding for just family and a few friends. They’re also excited because they’ve just bought the Cole House. It’s been abandoned for years, so it will need a lot of work, but it’s also the only way they were able to afford it.
However, the house turns out to be a bit of a nightmare, complete with weird sounds in the middle of the night. When Merry visits one night, the evening ends in disaster when the three finds a dead body on the property. Worse yet, the police think Mark might be the killer. Despite being warned away from the investigation, Merry starts to gather information. Can she figure out what happened?
Normally, I enjoy these books, but I have found one or two that weren’t quite as good. Unfortunately, this is one of those times. The plot just didn’t work for me. The story took way too long to get going – to even really have an idea where things were going to go. Tension wise, the story did pick up once the murder had happened, but I felt like the it just didn’t work overall. Having said that, my questions were answered at the end.
Since this is set in spring, this book doesn’t have the cozy Christmas vibes you might be expecting before you pick the book up. Being a Southern California resident where we only ever dream of a white Christmas, I was surprised to find that I was wishing for some snow to give me more of the Christmas vibes. Having said that, I did enjoy getting to visit Rudolph outside of December. This is more a me thing than anything having to do with the book.
I’m glad to say the cast of characters were as charming as always. I always enjoy getting to visit them, and this book was no exception. The suspects we met were all interesting and did a great job of pulling me further into the story after the murder happened.
One of the subplots of this book is Vicky working on a proposal for a cookbook. You see, Vicky runs the bake shoppe in town and her creations are extremely popular. We benefit since we get three recipes at the end of this book that come from her cookbook.
Fans of the series will want to visit Merry and the gang in A Slay Ride Together with You. But if you haven’t started the series yet, you can skip this one.
Here are the rest of the Year-Round Christmas Mysteries.
NOTE: I received an ARC of this book.
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