May the Best Man Die

Rating:
Summary: It Only Gets Better....
Review: Deborah Donnelly has a great series with her sleuth/wedding planner - Carnegie Kincaid. The plot/subplots are great and her wedding and party planning ideas are pretty good as well.

I would not have missed reading about the Christmas wedding for anything. The "Killer B's" were great. I am going to miss them and hope that somehow they'll be included in the next book if only slightly. (Kind of how the southern Sheriff always managed to appear SOMEWHERE in the James Bond movies.)

This is not a "gruesome" murder series. It is a joy to find another great read.

Rating:
Summary: It Only Gets Better....
Review: Deborah Donnelly has a great series with her sleuth/wedding planner - Carnegie Kincaid. The plot/subplots are great and her wedding and party planning ideas are pretty good as well.

I would not have missed reading about the Christmas wedding for anything. The "Killer B's" were great. I am going to miss them and hope that somehow they'll be included in the next book if only slightly. (Kind of how the southern Sheriff always managed to appear SOMEWHERE in the James Bond movies.)

This is not a "gruesome" murder series. It is a joy to find another great read.

Rating:
Summary: I like this series,
Review: I am having such a fun time reading each book in this series. I can't wait for the next book to be released.

Rating:
Summary: A Vastly Improving Series
Review: I had almost quit reading this series after the first book which I did not particularly like, but decided to continue with the other two books that were available and now that I have read the third book, May The Best Man Die, I'm glad that I did. This book I believe is a great improvement over the first two books.

Veiled Threats: Carnegie Kincaid is a wedding planner who seems to have a murder along with each of her events. I would think clients would be reluctant to continue coming to her. I knew who the killer was almost from the beginning of the book and the plot was so convoluted I wished everyone had been killed by the end.

Died To Match: The second book was a slight improvement in that the mystery was much more interesting, but was ruined by what I thought a not very well thought out killer. Even when the book was over, I didn't believe who the killer was.

I wasn't sure I wanted to tackle the third book, but it turned out to be very good. The mystery was interesting, the killer was a complete surprise but fitted in perfectly with the storyline. I love the relationship between Carnegie and Aaron her on again / off again reporter boyfriend. She has some great supporting people, Boris the florist, Her best friend Lily and the hilarious Buckmeister family, whose first appeared in Died to Match and are still planning their daughter's Christmas wedding in this book. The plans for this wedding gives new meaning to the word tacky.

Even though I didn't find the first two books to be very good, I think it's important to start with them, because they do give you a real feel of the characters, their backgrounds and explanations as to why they are doing certains things in later books.

Rating:
Summary: A Well Planned, Well Catered Read
Review: In this, her third mystery, Deborah Donnelly only
continues to make her heroine and hero's more appealing, her mystery more difficult to solve and the background information
as frothy as whipped cream in appearance and solid as brick in weight.
Carnegie is a wedding planner beset with boyfri woes, financial woes and demanding clients. Forced to cater a bachelor party
briefly mistaken for a stripper and finding out her
former boyfri is on the premises, Carnegie leaves in a huff only to note that her rental looks(with a bit of binocular assistance) into the party area. Noting a fight between two of the guests she later learns that one of the fighters is dead,
From running around planning weddings to running away from the
killer is a leap that Donnelly has Carnegie take easily, believably and us right along with her. Her primary characters are appealing BUT what is intriguing is that her secondary cast of characters also have such appeal that we wonder and worry
about them as well. Not a long book or an especially heavy one-
May The Best Man Die goes down like a particularly
fine wedding cake that has been strongly laced with
a first class brandy. Yummy.

Rating:
Summary: Good, breezy writing
Review: Seattle-based wedding planner Carnegie Kincaid has a lot on her plate. Dry rot has forced a temporary evacuation of her home and office, a rented houseboat moored on the east shore of Washington's Lake Union, and from her interim quarters she is overseeing the final preparations for two end-of-year nuptials. Preparations for the Buckmeister/Frost Christmas Eve wedding aren't unusually problematic, but the blowout Carnegie's planning for New Year's Eve proves to be a trial. For one thing, bride-to-be Sally Tyler--the daughter of renowned conductor Charles Tyler and his superstar CEO wife Ivy--is a spoiled rich girl with the people skills to match. For another, the groom's disagreeable best man turns up dead the morning after the bachelor party, and Carnegie--spying on the debauch for her own reasons through a pair of binoculars--may have witnessed the prelude to his murder.

May the Best Man Die is the third book in Deborah Donnelly's series of Wedding Planner Mysteries. (I have not read the first two books in the series but plan to remedy that fault.) It's a tightly-plotted mystery with a likable protagonist and good, breezy writing: "So, roundly cursing Ms. Tyler and the stack of wedding magazines she rode in on, I climbed into my van [the Vanna White Too, by the way] and drove south." Readers looking for a quick, well-written cozy will find Donnelly's series delightful.

Debra Hamel -- book-blog reviews
Author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece

Rating:
Summary: Funny and fascinating amateur sleuth tale
Review: Wedding planner Carnegie Kincaid may create other events from time to time but she draws the line at bachelor parties. She is understandably perturbed to get a call from her bride ordering her to go to the Hot Spot to straighten something up for the groom. When she arrives at the famous club, the best man asks her to make a liquor run. She walks out in a huff and when she returns to her office, she looks out her window and sees the best man and her best friend's brother fighting.

The next day a policeman comes to her office asking her to identify a body at the morgue because Carnegie's business card was found in his pants pocket. A reluctant Carnegie identifies the body as Jason Kraye, the best man. She then goes on to tell the police officer about the fight she witnessed and the police arrest Darren. Lily is furious at Carnegie for ratting out her brother and a remorseful Carnegie swears to her friend she will find out who the killer is. Her promise almost costs Carnegie her life.

Each book in this funny and fascinating amateur sleuth series is better than the one before. The author, a talented writer with a wicked knack for creating crisp dialogue and sharp characters, allows her heroine to grow and change so that readers feel she is believable. Despite the fact that two murders take place in MAY THE BEST MAN DIE, there is no violence in the novel so fans of cosies will want to obtain this weeding bell blues novel.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: Funny and fascinating amateur sleuth tale
Review: Wedding planner Carnegie Kincaid may create other events from time to time but she draws the line at bachelor parties. She is understandably perturbed to get a call from her bride ordering her to go to the Hot Spot to straighten something up for the groom. When she arrives at the famous club, the best man asks her to make a liquor run. She walks out in a huff and when she returns to her office, she looks out her window and sees the best man and her best friend's brother fighting.

The next day a policeman comes to her office asking her to identify a body at the morgue because Carnegie's business card was found in his pants pocket. A reluctant Carnegie identifies the body as Jason Kraye, the best man. She then goes on to tell the police officer about the fight she witnessed and the police arrest Darren. Lily is furious at Carnegie for ratting out her brother and a remorseful Carnegie swears to her friend she will find out who the killer is. Her promise almost costs Carnegie her life.

Each book in this funny and fascinating amateur sleuth series is better than the one before. The author, a talented writer with a wicked knack for creating crisp dialogue and sharp characters, allows her heroine to grow and change so that readers feel she is believable. Despite the fact that two murders take place in MAY THE BEST MAN DIE, there is no violence in the novel so fans of cosies will want to obtain this weeding bell blues novel.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: This series just gets better and better!
Review: Who can resist a wedding? Especially a wedding surrounded by murder, yuletide mayhem, and a wonderful cast of characters led by smart and sexy wedding planner, Carnegie Kincaid. Her bumpy romance with Aaron is irresistable, and the secondary characters are just plain fun (love those Buckmeisters!)

Perfect weekend reading!

Rating:
Summary: This series just gets better and better!
Review: Who can resist a wedding? Especially a wedding surrounded by murder, yuletide mayhem, and a wonderful cast of characters led by smart and sexy wedding planner, Carnegie Kincaid. Her bumpy romance with Aaron is irresistable, and the secondary characters are just plain fun (love those Buckmeisters!)

Perfect weekend reading!