Blackvine Manor Mystery
Wendy Meadows
Majestic Owl Publishing, May 2016
261 pages, ebook only
Cozy-style mystery
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I was provided a free copy of this book from the author’s newsletter. This is my honest review for which I receive no compensation of any kind.
And here begins the reveal…
The cover that I have on my copy is the one I’m showing at the right with the red front door with ivy and shadows encroaching. It goes perfectly with the book and is rather eye-catching. It’s pretty much the way I picture Blackvine Manor.
The story is complex and certainly engaging. It takes place at the current time and back in the past, not in memories but in a sort of time travel. The top floor of Blackvine Manor was an opulent apartment that was occupied by Delia Charles, the mother of Maxwell Charles. In the courtyard is a fountain that was the site of Delia’s illicit love affair. Alexis Cole moves into the same building that her mother Alice had lived in. Except for the passage of time, she discovers much of the same things that Alice did. She sees ghosts and hears conversations. But Alexis actually finds the skeleton of Delia hidden under the floor tiles. She sees the romance in the ghostly visions in the courtyard. And she goes back in time, just as Alice did. Unlike Alice, she doesn’t lose her abilities to see ghosts and communicate with them and come back to her own time. Once all the twists and turns and explanations are done, and the cover-up is uncovered, there are people dead, and people sorry, and people very unhappy. There is also another romance in the courtyard and wedding bells ringing around the rebuild fountain.
The characters are really well-written. They act and respond as real people would under the circumstances. They move and speak as real people.
The pace is a bit off. It is break-neck one minute and the next it is just barely moving along. The tension seems to suffer from this sort of pacing. But overall, the book is really good and I highly recommend it.
a thoughtful reveal 