Lori C. (dollycas) reviewed The Wagtail Murder Club (Paws & Claws, Bk 10) on + 727 more book reviews
Dollycas's Thoughts
The Sugar Maple Inn gets a new canine visitor when Holly Miller finds a beautiful black Labrador in a cage abandoned on the side of the road. He even came with a note â My name is Squishy. I am a very good boy. Please take good care of me. Holly alerts the local shelter and agrees to foster the lovable pup and he makes himself right at home with the other pets at the inn.
The inn starts to fill up with guests in town for a legal education seminar. One of the lawyers is Holly's ex Ben Hathaway who assumes he can stay again in Holly's private guest room. She also notices the rest of the group doesn't know about the EX part of their relationship.
Add to the mix a man recently released from prison where he was incarcerated for murdering a local man and now has decided to make Wagtail his home. And a moonlight hike up the mountain to view the lunar eclipse. The town expected hundreds of visitors. One thing they didn't expect was one of the attorneys staying at the inn would fall to her death during the event. A fall that was not an accident. A fall in the same place where another murder occured several years earlier.
It's time to bring the Wagtail Murder Club together. Holly, her mom, her grandmother, and Mr. Huckle, the Inn's butler, all gather in the private kitchen to discuss the current mysteries at hand â the murder â and the sweet Labrador who appears to have an important story of his own.
Ms. Davis has created such wonderful characters for this series. They are generous, kind with huge hearts, and adorable pets. I am always thrilled to catch up with them. But this time I wanted to jump right into the pages when Holly made a gigantic error in judgment. I wanted to rewind the situation to prevent her from doing something I knew would hurt someone badly. Humans make errors in real life so it is a given that characters in books will make errors but this one was something major that I wasn't sure how the author was going to fix. I need to buy myself a T-shirt that says âemotionally attached to fictional charactersâ because I was really angry at Holly and almost put the book down. But I knew I had to trust the author because she would and did bring Holly back where she belonged. It is a true testament to Ms. Davis's creativity and writing that her readers become truly invested in her characters. These are some of my favorite cozy characters for good reason.
The mystery was complicated with several suspects spanning all the subplots to make isolating a murderer a difficult task. The Wagtail Murder Club came up with many theories and assigned each other different tasks to try to ferret through the clues. There were some shady things going on with the lawyers but there was a lot more to their stories. Holly did a lot of running around and she surprisingly found a crucial piece of evidence that started to put things into perspective. I did pin down one small part of the mystery early but then was up in the air about everything else. The author plotted out a complex story tying an old murder to a new one that kept me captivated until all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place.
I truly wish Wagtail was a real place. I would love to treat my Australian Cattle Dog â Daisy and my husband to a vacation there. We would enjoy the restaurants and all the special events but my dream vacation would be joining The Wagtail Murder Club to help them solve a murder. I am sure Daisy would become fast friends with Trixie and Gingersnap and help in any way she could. I can easily picture us in Holly's golf cart headed out to follow a suspect or a clue.
The Wagtail Murder Club was a Perfect Escape. The fantastic characters evoked real emotions that tugged at my heart. The story was well-plotted and written with a fabulous ending that made me so happy. My only complaint is that my visit to Wagtail ended much too soon. I try to slow down to enjoy each moment but the pages just fly when I get all caught up in one of these stories.
While each book in this series can be read on its own you are cheating yourself if you don't get to know these characters and the super pet-friendly town of Wagtail, Virginia from the start.
The Sugar Maple Inn gets a new canine visitor when Holly Miller finds a beautiful black Labrador in a cage abandoned on the side of the road. He even came with a note â My name is Squishy. I am a very good boy. Please take good care of me. Holly alerts the local shelter and agrees to foster the lovable pup and he makes himself right at home with the other pets at the inn.
The inn starts to fill up with guests in town for a legal education seminar. One of the lawyers is Holly's ex Ben Hathaway who assumes he can stay again in Holly's private guest room. She also notices the rest of the group doesn't know about the EX part of their relationship.
Add to the mix a man recently released from prison where he was incarcerated for murdering a local man and now has decided to make Wagtail his home. And a moonlight hike up the mountain to view the lunar eclipse. The town expected hundreds of visitors. One thing they didn't expect was one of the attorneys staying at the inn would fall to her death during the event. A fall that was not an accident. A fall in the same place where another murder occured several years earlier.
It's time to bring the Wagtail Murder Club together. Holly, her mom, her grandmother, and Mr. Huckle, the Inn's butler, all gather in the private kitchen to discuss the current mysteries at hand â the murder â and the sweet Labrador who appears to have an important story of his own.
Ms. Davis has created such wonderful characters for this series. They are generous, kind with huge hearts, and adorable pets. I am always thrilled to catch up with them. But this time I wanted to jump right into the pages when Holly made a gigantic error in judgment. I wanted to rewind the situation to prevent her from doing something I knew would hurt someone badly. Humans make errors in real life so it is a given that characters in books will make errors but this one was something major that I wasn't sure how the author was going to fix. I need to buy myself a T-shirt that says âemotionally attached to fictional charactersâ because I was really angry at Holly and almost put the book down. But I knew I had to trust the author because she would and did bring Holly back where she belonged. It is a true testament to Ms. Davis's creativity and writing that her readers become truly invested in her characters. These are some of my favorite cozy characters for good reason.
The mystery was complicated with several suspects spanning all the subplots to make isolating a murderer a difficult task. The Wagtail Murder Club came up with many theories and assigned each other different tasks to try to ferret through the clues. There were some shady things going on with the lawyers but there was a lot more to their stories. Holly did a lot of running around and she surprisingly found a crucial piece of evidence that started to put things into perspective. I did pin down one small part of the mystery early but then was up in the air about everything else. The author plotted out a complex story tying an old murder to a new one that kept me captivated until all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place.
I truly wish Wagtail was a real place. I would love to treat my Australian Cattle Dog â Daisy and my husband to a vacation there. We would enjoy the restaurants and all the special events but my dream vacation would be joining The Wagtail Murder Club to help them solve a murder. I am sure Daisy would become fast friends with Trixie and Gingersnap and help in any way she could. I can easily picture us in Holly's golf cart headed out to follow a suspect or a clue.
The Wagtail Murder Club was a Perfect Escape. The fantastic characters evoked real emotions that tugged at my heart. The story was well-plotted and written with a fabulous ending that made me so happy. My only complaint is that my visit to Wagtail ended much too soon. I try to slow down to enjoy each moment but the pages just fly when I get all caught up in one of these stories.
While each book in this series can be read on its own you are cheating yourself if you don't get to know these characters and the super pet-friendly town of Wagtail, Virginia from the start.
