I’m in the middle of a book, so I turned to Sandie Herron today for one of her audiobook reviews. Have You Heard?
Murder on the House
Another very enjoyable ghost story from Juliet Blackwell can be read in Murder on the House. Following Mel Turner’s new and developing skills in talking to ghosts, she decides to take on a new challenge. An historic Victorian home needs to be restored. Work has begun on a small scale with a passionate gardener already at work along with other individual repairs.
An elderly woman who spent 60 happily married years at the house until her husband died not so long ago has already signed an agreement to sell the home to a couple who want to convert the mansion into a bed and breakfast … A haunted B&B inn. Mel already knows from a previous visit to the home that an entire family – medical doctor, his wife, a son and a daughter – died in the home. Mel has used her growing talents of talking with ghosts to chat with the young girl after hearing her singing in the nursery.
Any contractors who are interested in winning the possible AIA award winning job must spend an entire evening at the mansion without leaving. The handful of contractors and their friends or aides all gather with the elderly woman for a pizza dinner. They begin disbanding when a ruckus in the nursery sends them all running, some toward the room and some out of the house. Mel calms everyone in the nursery by showing the toy truck who announces his own arrival, the bag of marbles that spilled, and so on.
When they make it back to the kitchen, they discover that someone is missing. When she is found, she is no longer alive. All involved try to call 911 on their cell phones, but their batteries have been drained. Even the landline at the house is out of order. Mel realizes the pizza place is just down the street, so she runs there and calls 911. In doing so, she’s alerted those at the pizza place what is going on and where. The elderly woman had raised many foster kids, some of whom still live and work in town, and eat pizza!
Mel and her entourage make it back to the mansion in time to meet the paramedics and see the dead body removed. The evening is over after that. Mel can’t let go of the many unanswered mysteries and soon finds all the men currently in her life following her every move … Her ex husband and her stepson Caleb who was hurt in his home which is under renovation, Graham, her current date who wants to be more, her father and family friend Stan who ran Turner Construction, and even the Dog who is male!
By the end of this charming story, I wasn’t sure if I’d read a cozy, a woo woo story, a romance, or some other category books fall into. Not that it truly matters to me, as long as the book is well written, and this certainly was well written. The only reason I didn’t give it five stars was the middle of the story got the “what ifs,” which is what I call it if a mystery becomes bogged down with the author asking what if character C killed her, or what if it was character H at the cookie jar, etc. Otherwise, Juliet Blackwell has written an engaging, mysterious, funny, silly yet deadly serious book. The ending brings answers to all those pesky questions as well.
Way to go Juliet for writing a fine story, and to Xe for superbly narrating the many characters in this audiobook. I truly am looking forward to reading the next excellent chapter in Mel Turner’s life!
