More like 2.5 ( )

4 stars

If a woman screams in the forest and no one hears her, does she feel any better?

It makes a hell of an opening line.

Another sly reference

Robert Frost would have loved my forests. The woods were lovely, dark, and deep, but I had promises to keep.

The Legion of Horrible Ladies, the women Merry has been hoodwinked into renting rooms to for a few months, cause a lot of trouble for the heroine but lots of laughter for reader. I enjoy this series so much and it’s mostly because the author is so great with the characters.

For example Merry’s description of Cleta

I’ll start with Cleta, also known as the thorn in my side, a perpetual grim reminder of how someone you find irritating can become, through constant exposure, the Reason You No Longer Enjoy Living.

I’d suggest that you read the books of the series in order, although each is a standalone mystery there is a continuing story from book to book that would be spoiled by reading them out of order. ( )

It took me a while to get into this book but I think that's because I haven't read the first two books in the series. There are a lot of characters so I didn't understand some of the references to their past. Once I got a grasp of who was who etc. I really enjoyed the book. I love the setting being in an old castle in America! I am definitely going to put the first two in this series on my TBR pile. ( )

I keep powering through this series. I think, just to get it done. I have two more books in it. No doubt they will all be the same. They just circle, circle, circle. Which one of you invited Cleta? Let's talk about it for 90 pages and ask each of you four times. You can all keep denying it until the last two pages when I tell you who invited her. ( )

Merry Wynter inherited Wynter Castle from her late uncle, and has decided to temporarily take in renters. When her friend Pish says his aunt wants to stay, Merry is delighted. But Aunt Lush shows up with a group of four other women - all well-to-do, whom Merry has termed the Legion of Horrible Ladies. Now Merry's stuck with a demanding group of older women who don't seem to want to leave, and one of them - Cleta Sanson - outdoes all the others with her nasty barbs against others. But since she's paid for the time, Merry's stuck with her or faces a lawsuit.

When Cleta is found dead it's at first considered natural circumstances. But the coroner discovers that Cleta was murdered, and since the likely suspects are all staying at the castle, Merry doesn't want a murderer under her roof and does a little investigating on her own, hoping one of them will let something slip that leads her to the killer...

I was really hoping that this book, the third in the series, would improve over the last but it was not to be. A lot of the book rehashed the characters from other books and it got tiresome hearing how what a good friend Pish was. As a matter of fact, we really didn't get to know anything about most the guests, so never got to connect with them. As far as the locals go, I can't in all honesty like Juniper, who doesn't listen to her employer and is mouthy; nor Emerald, who seems to have "found religion" of a sort and spouts it to Merry every chance she gets. That's annoying in itself.

I also didn't feel the connection between Merry and Virgil. I get that they're interested in each other, but there's no spark at all. They seem to be just two people who sort of leeched onto one another for lack of better prospects around. I also wondered about Merry's age. When the books began she was thirty-nine, but now it's less than a year later and she's 'almost' forty-two? How fast do people age in this town? Some people even age backwards. In the first book, Hannah mentions how she's thirty (stated "Binny left when Hannah was fifteen so it must have been fifteen years ago"); but now she's in her twenties. Curious, indeed.

Of all the characters, I disliked Lauda as much as Cleta. She was pushy, annoying, and rude; and we're supposed to believe she was the poor put-upon niece. If I were Merry, I would have just handed her a refund check and told her to hightail it off my land. I wouldn't put up with a rude, nasty person like that. She really wasn't much different than her aunt and all Merry did was trade one for the other. In Lauda's case, though, she could have removed her from the premises. There's also something said to Lauda that pertains to the murder which didn't make sense to me because it would have to be proven in order to be valid.

I also didn't get why Merry would allow five people (plus herself, Pish, and assorted employees) to live at her home and cook for each and every one of them. Just because someone is paying you rent doesn't mean you're responsible for all their meals. I've yet to see a landlord provide meals to all their tenants (if people are staying for months you in effect become a landlord, not an innkeeper) three times a day. Maybe breakfast, but send those people out to eat. Not to mention the recipes in the back are horrendous - Chicken Spaghetti? Bacon and Peanut Butter Muffins? (What is it with the bacon muffins? She had bacon muffins in the first book, too). Just my opinion on the recipes, though...

Anyway, as you can tell I wasn't enthralled with this book. It was merely average as far as cozies go. There was nothing to make it stand out and even when Merry discovers a little bit more about her father's family in each book, it's not really interesting enough to make me care anything about any of them, Merry included. She's got a rather morose type of personality, lamenting about one thing or another all the time. At least she's beginning to change a little bit toward the end of the book, so that's a good thing.

At the end, while I didn't feel we were given any clues as to who the murderer was, it was satisfactory and everything came out alright. As I said, this is fine for a mystery and can be read in a few hours or so. ( )