Tis the Season to be Scary: A Halloween Twist on Vicki Delany’s Year Round Christmas Series

Read time: 5 minutes

📱📖 Read on Kobo 📃 295 pages ⏱ Duration: 5 hours
Genre: Cozy Mystery 🏷️ Publisher name: Crooked Lane Books

Book Blurb:

It’s Halloween in Rudolph, New York, and the town has gathered at the Yuletide Inn for a costume gala benefiting the local hospital. Shop owner Merry Wilkinson has her own excitement brewing too. Best friend Vicky Casey has a new cookbook on the way, and the launch draws out Vicky’s publishers, a sharp-tongued critic, and a former opera singer rumored to have history with Merry’s mother. Tensions rise fast once the party gets going. The critic causes a scene, ticket irregularities surface, and then a guest collapses after eating one of Vicky’s cake pops. With suspicion falling on her best friend and the fundraiser unraveling, Merry has to separate fact from ghost story, fast, all while something that looks a lot like Ebenezer Scrooge watches from the shadows.

Let’s talk … murder!!!

Two books not a trend makes, however, I am curious. I read two books almost back to back from Vicki Delany, both released and to be released in a gap of about 3 months, and both follow sort of a same theme. Paranormal inclinations, the main character taking a slight backfoot in the investigation, mystery naturally solved by the MC but out of sheer coincidence, which even the MC agrees. I am, in no way saying there is any issue with that. Vicki Delany builds a beautiful story, as usual, and it had been tremendously enjoyable reading it. The similarities stood out though.

But over to the fun part now.

Merry is back and it is Halloween in Rudolph, New York. Mattie still has a massive crush on Diane Simmonds (I truly enjoy watching Mattie be a perfect dog around Detective Simmonds). There’s Santa, Alan’s toy workshop, Randall, and also a dead body. But to bring in Halloween ambience, there’s also a ghost. I enjoyed the inclusion of paranormal in a traditional mystery and how Merry keeps trying to explain it to her logical mind, eventually giving up, accepting that not everything can be explained. The story line was engaging, the additional characters coming in from outside to add chaos to Rudolph, was fun to read. Merry’s dad, Santa, is always fun whenever he’s in the scene. Jackie and Kyle are Jackie and Kyle as usual.

The one thing I always enjoy in this particular series is Vicki adding her namesake as Merry’s friend. I love the personality this book-character Vicki has and keep imagining this is how Vicki Delany would be too. This is a perfect Halloween book to curl up and read while trick or treating is going on outside, when the veil between the human world and spiritual world is thin.

Would I recommend it?

Yes, absolutely, mark your calendar for September 8th. Tis the Season to be Scary is a genuinely fun addition to the Year Round Christmas series, Halloween ambience and all. Merry’s crush-adjacent dynamic with Diane Simmonds through Mattie (a very good, very smitten dog) is worth the read alone. The paranormal thread is light-handed and never silly, and it lets Merry wrestle with her logical brain in a way that felt true to her character. Add this one to your TBR now, before the ghosts of Rudolph beat you to it.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

You might also like:

• Rest Ye Murdered Gentlemen (A Year-Round Christmas Mystery #1) by Vicki Delany
  If you want to meet Merry, Mattie, and Rudolph from the very beginning, this is where the whole Christmas Town saga starts.

Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy

• Elementary, She Read (A Sherlock Holmes Bookshop Mystery #1) by Vicki Delany
  For more of Vicki Delany’s cozy charm minus the ghosts, Gemma Doyle’s Cape Cod bookshop mysteries are just as much fun to fall into.

Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy

• The Ghost and Mrs. McClure (A Haunted Bookshop Mystery #1) by Alice Kimberly
  If Merry’s ghost had you wanting more paranormal in your cozy mystery, Penelope’s haunted Rhode Island bookshop and its resident PI ghost deliver that in full.

Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy

• Halloween Party Murder by Leslie Meier, Lee Hollis, and Barbara Ross
  Three Halloween-set cozy novellas in one book, perfect for keeping the trick-or-treat mystery mood going a little longer.

Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy

• A Ghostly Light (A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery #7) by Juliet Blackwell
  Another cozy series where the ghosts are practically part of the cast, this one trades Rudolph’s snow for a haunted lighthouse on the California coast.

Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy

Boo-tiful Reads (or, What Do You Say?)

Was there a ghost in Rudolph, or was it just the veil being extra thin this year? I want to know your theories. Drop them in the comments.

Book Links:

Want to purchase this or any of your favorite books while supporting a local bookstore? Consider purchasing using the sites below. These sites work with independent local bookstore owners to fulfill your book orders. #SupportLocal

Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy
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