Member Reviews
A fun and interesting first book in a series. The characters are unique and the mystery keeps you guessing.
Reviewed this last year, sorry I forgot to post it here.
Deadly Dog Days is book one in the Dog Days Mystery series and I thought it was a good start to a new series.
Cameron (Cam) is separated from her policeman husband, but a part of her still wishes things were back to normal. Her life gets very chaotic once she finds the body of a young woman that her husband has been seen with around town. He swears they were only friends but because of it, they are both suspects at one point in the story.
Cam works as a volunteer for the town musical. She has a small crew of interesting people who are working their community service off making phone calls trying to get people to buy tickets to the towns musical. The young woman who was killed was the lead actress in the play, so it gets put on hold. Because she is a suspect she enlist her band of misfits to help her try and solve the crime by forming an action agency, sort of like a crime watch.
She has to step things up a notch when her husband is arrested. They know he is being framed but who would have done it. There are a few who could have done it and it had me a bit stumped and I just figured it out not too long before Cam.
Cam is a fun character, she is at a crossroads in her life. She is separated from her husband, in a small town where her mother-in-law is part of the Daughters of Metamora and seems to love torturing her at every turn. She feels bad for the deceased dogs so she takes them in and they are a rambunctious lot. Her stepdaughter its a teenager who loves to do the eye roll thing and drives her crazy. Her sister Monica has come to visit and gets wrapped up in the chaos and finds her calling as a dog treat cookie maker.
Overall, this was a good cozy and perfect for dog lovers.
I fell in love with this book almost from the first sentence. The author has a writing style which drew me in, made the characters all seem real, and had me turning pages quickly to find out what was going to happen next.
Cameron definitely has a lot going on in her life. She is trying to figure out whether or not she wants to save her marriage, she is running a phone bank to sell tickets to a musical the town hopes will boost their tourism, and she is battling with her mother-in-law over the family home. Then she finds a body in the canal and adds more to her to-do list, especially when she adopts the victims five dogs--and discovers she and her husband are both on the suspect list. And let's not forget her stepdaughter, who is full of attitude, is staying with her, as is Cameron's sister.
All of the characters are very realistically written....some of them remind me a great deal of people I know. I look forward to getting to know these folks better as the series continues, and to see how the relationships change and grow.
The mystery is also very well-developed and kept me guessing up until the final reveal, which is just the way I like my mysteries.
Highly recommend this book to all cozy lovers!!
Cute read!! I picked this because it was a book with dogs on the cover & was so glad to find the story was entertaining. This is the first book in the A Dog Days series & I look forward to reading the next book in the series.
I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy of this book.
An enjoyable read. My first book by this author. I'll be on the lookout for more.
Cameron Cripps-Haymon is eating her lunch by the canal when she notices a hand reaching of the water - but it's not moving. After the police arrive it's discovered that the body is the "girlfriend" of her estranged husband so Cameron is immediately a suspect. When she finds out that the woman had 5 dogs and that no one is caring for them, she takes them in. These dogs have varying personalities which keeps Cam on her toes.
At the same time as she is "investigating" trying to clear herself from suspicion, she also has to deal with her mother-in-law who regrets handing the family estate over to her son and Cam. The MIL tries to appropriate the house back piece by piece making for some very funny incidents interwoven throughout.
I( enjoyed this book and will look forward to another in this series.
This is the first book in the new dog days mystery series. Our protagonist Cameron is having a nice day by the water when she finds the body of her ex husbands girlfriend. Soon she finds herself the prime suspect. She must prove her innocence by finding the right suspect and fighting the suspicion of the entire town
This is a fun fast cozy mystery read with interesting characters and a good sleuth. It is a interesting and fun read.
This is the first in a great series for anyone who loves dogs. It's set in a quirky little village, Metamora which is situated around a canal. The village is fading fast due to lack of revenue and the little shops left are struggling to survive.
Cameron Cripps-Haymon is enjoying her lunch by the canal when she spies a hand in the shallow part of the canal. She immediately finds herself involved up to her neck with a murder mystery. Cameron finds herself at the top of the list of suspects even though personally she's never met the young woman.
She inherits the dead woman's assorted group of five dogs which make for some great entertainment. Not to mention the group of misfits who make up the Metamora Action Agency who are trying to help clear her name. Plus her estranged husband's mother who is trying to piece mill her home out from under her.
I love cozy mysteries and this one hits all the right spots. I can't wait to see Ms. Blair has for us next.
I would like to thank Midnight Ink and Netgalley for an e-galley for my honest review.
I love cozy mysteries and I love dogs. This was a cute and suspenseful cozy mystery.
Believably mystery with characters that you can relate and who's feeling you can see as your own
Deadly Dog Days is the first book in the Dog Days Mystery series by Jamie M. Blair. New to the historic town of Metamora, Indiana, Cameron Cripps-Hayman is looking to make friends with her neighbors. What she isn’t looking for is one of their bodies floating in the canal. When she and her estranged husband, the town sheriff, are both named suspects for the murder, Cameron takes solving the crime into her own hands, teaming up with her eccentric co-workers who dub themselves The Metamora Action Agency. As if hunting for a murderer with two high school geniuses, the town drunk, and an elderly kleptomaniac isn’t hard enough, Cameron adopts the five mangy guard dogs of her deceased neighbor. But maybe a stint at playing gatekeeper is just what she needs to come face-to-face with the killer and save another neighbor from being the next victim.
Deadly Dog Days is a cozy mystery with all the expected elements. There is a small town with plenty of eccentric characters, a main character with relationship troubles and a penchant for getting into trouble, and of course a dead body. Cameron is our amateur sleuth, who stumbles across the dead body or a younger lady- who is rumored to be dating her estranged husband. I like that Cameron is around my age- approaching 40 aware of her limitations and her skill set. she is not in the stage of trying to figure out who she is, but is still working on where she fits into a town that is still fairly new to her. Her not quite ex-husband Ben does not get much play in the story- even though he is important to it. Readers get glimpses at the backstory of Cam and Ben, but there is plenty of missing information to be filled in later. I did like that the relationship issues had there role to play in the story but did not overwhelm the murder mystery and character information readers get about the secondary characters. The author did a good job of balancing priorities in a reasonably realistic way. I thought the personalities of the animals- both dogs and mysterious cat, were fun and well done. It added an extra layer of fun to the story that I appreciated. I think the Mother in law being crazy aspect was fairly well done, though a little trite. It worked, but could have been a little less expected.
Deadly Dog Days is the start of an intriguing cozy mystery series. I am interested to see where is goes, and to watching the characters in the small town interact more in future books. There is no information on when this might happen on Goodreads or Amazon yet.
Being an animal person, I jumped at the chance to read this book. The dogs had me smiling while their tails were wagging and mysteries were being solved.
Cameron Cripps taking on these five furry canines while having a serious murder to solve made this book both complex and simple at the same time. I liked it!
My copy came from Net Galley. I wasn't required to leave a review. I simply couldn't resist leaving one! My thoughts and opinions are my own.