October 23rd's Friday Fun

Welcome to Friday and this week's Friday Fun.  As usual, I will be linking up to:

First Line Friday
Friday Book Snippets
Book Blogger Hop

My teasers for the first two this week will be coming form #TreatYourself to Murder, the fifth in the Trending Topic Mysteries from Sarah E. Burr.

And yes, it's a Christmas cozy mystery.  Since I had an ARC of the book, I read it now instead of saving it for December.

Here's how the book begins:

I stared at the twenty-four-year-old woman’s black-and-white photo as I taped the neon pink flyer onto a stop sign pole. Where are you, Zelda? How did you just vanish into thin air?

It may not be murder, but that opening does grab you right away, right?

Meanwhile, much later in the book, we get this:

We turned to greet the newcomer, everyone’s faces falling slightly—save Maria’s—when we discovered Chief McInnis storming toward the counter. Uh-oh. Paint his face green, and he could’ve passed as the Grinch.

I loved that reference since this is a Christmas book.

And I loved the book overall, which is no surprise since I usually enjoy Sarah's books.  My full review will be up on release day, which is Tuesday.  I hope you'll come back then.

Meanwhile, let's flip over to this week's Book Blogger Hop.  The question is:

What’s the creepiest book you’ve read that isn’t officially horror, but gave you chills?

Back in the day, I read about half the Animorphs series.  Mind you, I was an adult when they were coming out, so I was well beyond the middle grade target audience.  The premise is that ordinary kids have been given the power to morph into any animal they've touched in order to fight off an alien invasion.  And let me tell you, some of the scenes with those aliens were downright creepy.  As in I had nightmares after reading them.  Okay, so they were more suspense than creepy like the question was asking about, but the villains turned into some weird creatures.  And it's the first thing that popped into my head even two decades later since I rarely read anything too creepy.

Have a great weekend!