TV home renovators Peter Penwell and JP Broadway dive into their most spine-chilling project yet: Woods Hall. With a reputation for being haunted following a mysterious death 25 years ago, this renovation is fraught with ghostly apparitions, hidden passageways, and sabotage. As Halloween and the anniversary of the death approach, Peter and JP must complete their work and unravel the mystery before another tragedy strikes.

Ideal for fans of cozy mysteries with a touch more charm than chill, this book was a delightful blend for me!

I enjoyed how the story wove between different time periods, as the characters worked to uncover the truth behind past events by interviewing those who attended the party where Emma -dressed up as the people's princess- met her untimely end. Getting to know the jittery PJ and the unflappable JP, and seeing how they collaborate both professionally and personally, was a real treat. I hadn’t realized this was part of a series, and I’m eager to explore the earlier books. This read was incredibly charming and perfect for fall, though enjoyable any time of year!

I keep debating what to rate this book, because it was unique and the mystery was there but I was bored. It felt forced sometime and I guess the turnoff I had at the beginning is the generational hate. That doesn't view with me. Ick.

I got an e-arc of this book on NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I threw myself smack dab in the middle of a series and didn't realize it, but all the same absolutely adorded this wonderfully queer and cozy murder mystery!

This novel features home improvement show hosts and couple Peter and JP.

They are all set to renovate a historic manor when they learn it might be haunted.

It seems that beauty queen Emma Wheeler-Woods plummeted to her death in 1997. Now, her long-lost daughter is set to inherit the home Peter and JP are filming in.

What takes place from then on is a cozy who runs it that will keep readers guessing. Fans of Michigan will enjoy this fun read.

Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington for the ARC.

If you’re from southeast Michigan, these books really should be a must read. This zippy cozy series is set in Pleasant Ridge and features Michigan details like Shinola watches and Sanders bumpy cake, but even if you aren’t from the mitten, these are still fun reads. Main characters and life partners PJ and JP are, among other things, hosts of an “HDTV” home renovation series, where they take old houses and restore them to their former glory. This charming gay couple reminds me strongly of my favorite couple on HGTV’s Detroit based Bargain Block, and like it or not, their faces have attached themselves to my reading of the books.

This instalment is especially yummy, as the men take on an old, possibly haunted, house right around Halloween. The backstory: the 25-year-old owner, in long ago 1997, died after plunging off the balcony at the top of the house during her 25th birthday party – dressed as Princess Diana, no less. The story goes back and forth in time as the guys try to discern what happened all those years ago, talking to now older folks in town who attended the party. What’s more, the family associated with the house all seem to die untimely deaths, and so it’s felt there’s some kind of family curse.

Nevertheless, the daughter of the dead woman, Fiona, now an Indie music star, wants to restore the house and live in it (though her bratty boyfriend doesn’t seem so keen). Because of Fiona’s celebrity and the whole haunted house-ghost angle, HDTV is eager to have the guys get to work both on a new season of their show and on restoring the house. And in fact as they get to work the house does seem to be haunted, with a series of potentially serious accidents accompanying ghostly sightings.

JP is relentless and PJ is brave despite his anxieties and fears (they balance each other nicely) and they are neither letting go of their show or the idea that someone more temporal is behind the ghostliness. The layers they manage to peel away through their gentle questioning of survivors of that long ago deadly night form a good picture of Fiona’s family as well as of the dead woman’s life and her various ties of both friendship and kinship, good and bad, in her community.

The author paints a nice picture of their home life with their rescue dogs and their lovingly restored craftsman style house. The rule of the cozy mystery is that order be restored so that life can proceed as planned, and the two characters in this book manage to pull that off. They don’t even seem out of bounds in their sleuthing efforts which could be just general nosiness, even though they are of course putting together a complete picture of events. They are both likeable and different enough from each other to form an engaging couple, one you’re happy to reunite with in each book. As a reader, by book three, I promise you’ll have real affection for both JP and PJ and their rescue dogs.

Arc Review (Netgally)

This is a cozy mystery involving strange deaths in a manor that was built in 1913. PJ and Jp renovate houses for their TV show. When a famous couple decides to move into the manor 25 years after a tragic accident occurred, PJ and JP are asked to help renovate the space. The author was able to give great detail about the house and the characters, there aren't enough details about the mystery that occurred 25 years ago. We (the readers) are just told what actually happened instead of going through the events through the perspective of the characters, whether it be from a diary entry or a flashback.
I did love the Halloween themes used, and I do think this would be a great read if you also love home renovation. I do recommend reading the first two books since it brings up character and a few plot points that happened in the other two.

Thank you to Kensington books and NetGally for my ARC of Haunted to Death.

(3.5 stars, rounded down)
Polito writes an enjoyable cozy mystery in the “quozy” category, featuring two gay men as the main characters. PJ and JP (yep!) are partners in life and in business. They run a home restoration business in suburban Detroit that has its own TV show. In this story, the third in the series, they are hired to restore (not renovate!) a manor house built in 1913. It hasn’t been lived in for about 25 years, due to a tragic event in 1997, and is rumored to be haunted. The home is now owned by the female half of a young singing duo, Low-Fi, Fiona, who recently found out she was the heir to an automative fortune, people who previously owned the home. Her fiancé, Finn, is not really interested in the house, and is portrayed as being a bit obnoxious. It made it hard to figure out what Fiona saw in him!

In addition to their home restoration business, PJ is a writer and JP is an actor. PJ is the main narrator of the books. Because of their interest in homes and furnishings, there’s a lot of descriptions of various houses and furnishings throughout the book, not just of the manor house they’re working on. It got to be a bit much for me, along with the extensive descriptions of what everyone was wearing.

PJ and JP get drawn into helping find out what really happened when Fiona’s birth mother fell (or was pushed) from the third floor balcony to her death, all those years ago.

PJ and JP are dog lovers and own two rescues. There’s a lot about their dogs, which was cute, but didn’t really add to the mystery portion of the book.

The author has an obvious fondness for the Detroit area, which lent an air of authenticity to his descriptions.

Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Books for the opportunity to read an advance readers copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

I love a good quozy mystery, and Frank Anthony Polito delivers yet again. His story telling has the feel of sitting around a table at the local diner (maybe The Depot) listening to a master storyteller bringing you up-to-date on the latest local gossip.

I pride myself on being able to identify the murderer before they are revealed by the author. I was close but not close enough.

Also, you’ll never guess what they find in the garage. That needs its own season of Domestic Partners.

Support your local bookstores and pre-order this book. If you’re in Michigan, Sidetrack Books is hosting a launch party on August 20!

#FrankAnthonyPolito
#KensingtonBooks
#DomesticPartners
#HauntedToDeath
#thedailyclydeandjack

Content Warnings: Mild homophobia/biphobia (historical)

Polito’s novel is the third in a series. While, technically, it can be read as a standalone work, there are so many plot points and characters reintroduced from earlier books that its cumbersome.

Before addressing my critiques, here are some positives to the work. The fictional community in the novel is LGBTQ+ friendly and features various forms of representation. For those who prefer a cozy mystery that’s heavy on cozy and light on mystery, this book provides that. I’m not that reader, but I know some might be.

My primary critique of the work is that there is both too little and too much plot. There is too little plot related to the actual mysteries being addressed, namely the truth behind the death of Emma Woods in 1997 and whether the house undergoing renovation is haunted. Nothing spooky or majorly related to resolving the murder happen until about 60% into the book; the resolution of both cases doesn’t occur until literally the final major scene. All of the clues/investigation come in the form of readers being told, rather than shown, things, whether it’s from a diary, a memory of someone who attended the party where the death took place, or a monologue.

There is too much plot related to everything else. People’s clothing, architecture and design of various buildings, past events and characters, the narrator’s dogs, are all described in excruciating detail, but it’s too much detail to make anything stick out and, ultimately, most of these details are unimportant. For example, there are large portions of multiple chapters related to whether the narrator’s mom will get a dog, and then meeting the dog, and then that whole plot line is dropped with no resolution. There are multiple subplots like this that do not move the story forward and end up being unresolved, which is frustrating.

I am new to this author and still very new to murder mystery type stories, but I really enjoyed this one! I definitely was on the edge of my seat trying to figure out what was going on until all was revealed, and it was so fun!

Frank Anthony Polito is back with the third novel in his "Domestic Partners in Crime" series. This time, partners JP and PJ are called in to help renovate a long-abandoned mansion in the Detroit suburbs. The house was the scene of a suspected murder some decades ago, and some claim it is still haunted! JP and PJ agree to the renovation, but something or someone seem keen to put an end to it from the great Beyond!

This mystery unfurls in a fun way and keeps the reader guessing up until the big reveal! This series gets even better with each entry, and this is my favorite in the series. I am looking forward to many more in this fun series!