Rating: 
Summary: great winter mystery!
Review: A terrific mystery with lots of twists and turns, keeping you guessing until the final pages. Its filled with some likeable chatacters and you get a feel for what its like to own a big old home on the coast of Maine. Its a mix of some scarey moments, some real laughs, but mostly a tale of two women who care enough to risk a lot to help a friend blamed for a crime, they feel she didn't commit. I thought it was a wonderful cozy that kept my interest from the first page to the last.
Rating: 
Summary: Distracting punctuation and fragmented plot
Review: I am a fan of this series, and have very much enjoyed the four preceding books in it. This one, however, was a disappointment. First and foremost, the author has developed an extremely quirky use of colons. This may sound unduly fussy on my part, but the appearance of the colons is more than just a misuse of a punctuation mark: the author uses colons in this book as a substitute for appropriate paragraphing and sentence structure. The ubiquitous colons make the work read in a very fragmented manner. I prefer paragraphs and complete sentences; the colons seem almost lazy, and prevent the language from having any flow to it.Second, the characterizations and the plot were both fragmented. Like a Russian novel, numerous characters were introduced, but without enough about them to enable me to remember who they were between appearances. Perhaps this problem is related to the first one I mentioned, in that the abrupt writing style of this book distracted me from the content. I am looking forward to more books in this series. Coming out so soon after the fourth in the series, this one might have been a bit rushed (releasing it in the summer would have been infelicitous). I am more than willing to forgive this lapse in an otherwise very enjoyable series.
Rating:
Summary: Not that good a Christmas mystery
Review: I liked the characters, but I couldn't believe Jacobia allows her ex-husband to boss her around and to leave his excess junk at her house. 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.
Rating:
Summary: The town butcher is found butchered. Did his wife do it?
Review: Jacobia "Jake" Tiptree and her friend Ellie stumble across a dazed Faye Ann Carmody covered with blood in her house. Her husband Merle -- the town butcher who was not well liked -- is found in pieces wrapped in his own butcher paper. Faye Ann is charged with his murder but she can't remember a thing and had been drinking. Since it was widely known that Merle was abusive of Faye Ann, everyone believes she finally snapped. The police feel it's an open and shut case. Jake and Ellie don't. 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.
Rating:
Summary: The town butcher is found butchered. Did his wife do it?
Review: Jacobia "Jake" Tiptree and her friend Ellie stumble across a dazed Faye Ann Carmody covered with blood in her house. Her husband Merle -- the town butcher who was not well liked -- is found in pieces wrapped in his own butcher paper. Faye Ann is charged with his murder but she can't remember a thing and had been drinking. Since it was widely known that Merle was abusive of Faye Ann, everyone believes she finally snapped. The police feel it's an open and shut case. Jake and Ellie don't. 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.
Rating:
Summary: Distracting punctuation and fragmented plot
Review: Jake and Ellie arrive at Faye Ann Carmody's house and things are suspiciously silent. Worried, they enter the house to find a sea of blood. They fear the worst, Faye Ann's violent drunken husband has finally killed her. They are relieved when a dazed Faye Ann appears from under a pile of comforters. Unfortunately, she is covered with blood. When Jake enters Merle's butcher shop to see who is actually dead, she finds him, neated chopped up and wrapped in butcher paper. Jake and Ellie need to find out who killed Merle, because Faye Ann is not capable of either the crime or defending herself. This was a little more grisly that the usual Graves mystery, but very good. The author introduces us to even more of the unusual characters of Eastport, and life in a Maine seaside town in winter. Very Very good mystery!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Jake and Ellie solve a particularly grisly murder
Review: Jake and Ellie arrive at Faye Ann Carmody's house and things are suspiciously silent. Worried, they enter the house to find a sea of blood. They fear the worst, Faye Ann's violent drunken husband has finally killed her. They are relieved when a dazed Faye Ann appears from under a pile of comforters. Unfortunately, she is covered with blood. When Jake enters Merle's butcher shop to see who is actually dead, she finds him, neated chopped up and wrapped in butcher paper. Jake and Ellie need to find out who killed Merle, because Faye Ann is not capable of either the crime or defending herself. This was a little more grisly that the usual Graves mystery, but very good. The author introduces us to even more of the unusual characters of Eastport, and life in a Maine seaside town in winter. Very Very good mystery!!!!
Rating: 
Summary: I give up
Review: Like another reviewer, I was terribly distracted by the punctuation, but to me, the offending character was the comma. I complained about this in the Graves' first book, and it was apparently cleaned up until this book. 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Wreck the Halls
Review: Since she bought her rambling old fixer-upper of a house in Eastport, Maine, Jacobia Tiptree had gotten used to finding things broken. But when Jake's neighbor Faye Anne Carmody takes an axe to her husband, the local butcher, & Jake finds the body tidily stored in Faye's freezer, Jake's hopes of focusing on repairing old radiators & restoring antique shutters scamper away like sugarplum fairies. Old-house repair enthusiast Jake would rather have a paintbrush in one hand & a cup of holiday cheer in the other, but with a friend in deep trouble, she knows she needs to summon the spirit of Christmas past to solve the murders yet to come. For Jake can hear the jingle bells toll--it's going to be a lethal Yule in Eastport....
Rating:
Summary: Crisp & Cool as the Maine Winter
Review: The sense of place is so beautifully drawn in this clever little cozy, that I'll excuse the mystery that gets rather lost going down dark alleys and dashing about chasing red herrings in the sleet and the snow. The language is as crisp and cool as the Maine winter. The landscape on the island of Eastport in Washington County, is simply wonderously set out - and is a place I actually was blessed to spend some time last summer. Having a peek during the chill of winter had me turning up the air conditioning, brrrr! Jacobia and Ellie are quirkily charming characters, who easily become very real and dear friends. A fun approach to life and a witty sense of humor come through each page. The rest of the population seems to be made up of hard working, salt of the earth, good to the bone locals -OR seamy, unsavory, irritating characters (including a loathsome ex-husband who isn't to be completely written off). Even the animals have their charms. Well, not the skunk. I will absolutely have to have some more of Jake & Ellie, and thoroughly look forward to a return visit. Actually, Ms. Graves nearly had me packing up for a more extended stay on the coast of Maine, to join my dear friend who "ran away" almost exactly like Jacobia did.
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