I think I read one-third to one-half of this book before skimming to the rest of the story and reading the ending. Overall, this is a readable story. One good feature is the detail of everyday life that is described, and this book has too many problems for me to recommend it. The main character ruminates to the point of repeating content in the story, and does it frequently. Also, the author seems to be trying to cover too many styles of books in one story. The writing delves into descriptions of food and cooking like a food-themed book. There were also inconsistencies in the main character. The main character's obsessive focus on a misdirection from where the story was going (concern for animals in the house which was clearly not happening and yet was a repeated obsession) was annoying for me. There were hints of a romance novel. There are also side stories or sub-stories told by the characters, which is fine, except when the telling was not conveyed by the character but told in narrative mode and included details that the character would not know or experience. Then occasionally the narrative came back to the main story. Once I read where the story ended, I did not find it interesting enough and was glad to have skipped through.
— Rebecca ( )

This book fell between a number of stools unfortunately. It sets out to be a creepy tale of a 40-something woman who moves back into her family's original home, later on where only her grandmother lived and the rest of the family visited as a summer home. With the death of her grandmother, Tess moves in. She is a chef but wants more control over her life and has decided to open up the place as a bed and breakfast, since she has a friend living nearby already successfully doing so who will direct overflow business to her. Funnily enough, this friend never actually appears in the book.

When a friendly workman arrives to bleed her radiators - because she had never heard you had to do that let alone that you could easily do it yourself - she engages him and a couple of his pals to break down the door on a locked section of the house. It has been locked up for years, since her father was at university, but no one questioned her grandmother's excuse that she didn't want to heat that area. It is only when Tess decides to renovate, thinking it could become a private suite for herself when she opens the house for paying guests, that she starts to wonder. As a child, she had just accepted it being locked - which seems untypical for a child. But she is driven to get it open by scratching heard only at night. Luckily a white dog turns up and befriends her so is there to guard her from the seemingly malevolent presence in the locked room.

The workmen open up the area which turns out to be a studio belonging to her famous deceased grandfather whose paintings are now worth millions. But there is no sign of an animal using the place as a den, and Tess discovers five disturbing paintings. If her grandfather's, they are worth a fortune, yet they also imply that the painter was a stalker or worse.

The book veered all over the place because a lot of the story was a romance between Tess and the first workman, Wyatt. Quite a lot of the book features their various walks in the snow, visits to cookouts by the lake and so on. Every so often something creepy happens, but there is no tension because everyone believes Tess. She has a friendly neighbour who witnesses some of the apparition's activities, and his wife turns out to be a medium who assembles a crew of Ghostbusters (Wyatt and his workmates). They get everything on film, and there is objective evidence which even the local police chief believes and goes along with.

As if the romantic interludes were not enough to dissipate any chance of tension, the story comes to a halt periodically for a lovingly-written description of Tess cooking a recipe - you could actually do it yourself from the detailed instructions. If the author felt the need to include these, they could have been an appendix at the back rather than being allowed to completely derail the narrative. In a novel, they are weirdly out of place.

Lots of things in the story were left hanging: apparently there is a legend about a white dog that will turn up in a blizzard to help someone who needs it, and Tess' father also had such a dog which helped him as a child, but that isn't followed up. Similarly, there is a whole section about Wyatt's ancestor who founded the town, and how he had an strange experience where he lived with some people, fell in love with a woman there, but one day woke up and everything had disappeared. He told the story to some trappers and somehow the area became a draw to various travellers and traders, resulting in a town growing up around his house. It's all rather rambling and irrelevant - the sort of thing a writer would normally accept was a nice bit of writing but didn't really belong in the book and would cut out in the editing process.

All in all, I can only rate this as an OK 2 stars. ( )

My second of Kindle First Reads for October ‘22, and my first Wendy Webb book. It wasn’t quite what I expected, but I liked it anyway.

This is the story of Tess Bell, a fortysomething woman whose moved to Wharton, near the Great Lakes in the dead of winter to renovate her grandparents’ old home, and turn it into an B&B. But there are restless spirits in the old home and a decades-old unsolved mystery, which Tess must get to the bottom of.

The storyline is told from Tess’ POV and in third person. Definitely a quicker read at a little less than 300 pages. It was light on the horror, and I got more cozy mystery / gothic romance vibes from it. The writing is easy to read, if not a bit tell-y. Story is simple, but enjoyable.

Still, I liked Tess’ character and how family-oriented she is. Also liked her newfound dog a lot, Storm. The love story was a sweet second-chance romance. Loved the wintry, snowy small-town setting.

4 stars because while I enjoyed it, I wish there was deeper characterization of the side characters. I felt like they were very surface-level and many of them served simply to move the plot along. And the ending was a bit abrupt and felt like it wrapped up really fast.

Would recommend for fans of gothic mysteries and ghost stories. ( )

DNF @ 62%. Too wholesome. Too many full on recipes in the middle of scenes. I wanted a spooky book and I got a Lifetime romance.

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I got an ebook of this through Amazon First Reads.

Thoughts: This book takes place in the town of Wharton, which is where many of Webb's books take place. Previous to reading this book I had also read "The Haunting of Brynn Wilder". I liked but didn't love that book and I feel the same about this one.

As mentioned, this book is set on the shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota in the imaginary town of Wharton. I love going up to the North Shore in Minnesota myself and greatly enjoy the setting and reliving winter traditions of the North Shore.

The story involves Tess, who has inherited an old house and has decided to renovate it and reopen it as an inn. When she gets there she starts hearing strange noises and finds out that something else might already be lurking in the house with her. This story ends up being mostly a haunted house/mystery with a dash of supernatural added in.

I found the mystery to be creepy and engaging and loved the setting. I had the same issues with this book that I had with "The Haunting of Brynn Wilder". The conversations sound a bit stilted and awkward and the writing feels a bit simplistic and immature. There isn't a lot of description and I have trouble picturing my surroundings. Additionally, the characters are all "nice" but don't have a lot of depth to them. It ends up being a fine and slightly creepy mystery read that is just...well, fine.

My Summary (3.5/5): Overall this was a decent supernatural mystery read. I loved the Lake Superior shore setting and enjoyed the mystery. I am still finding that Webb's writing style doesn't really appeal to me; it is just too stark and simple. The characters lack any real excitement in their personalities and the mystery plays out in a fairly predictable way. If you are looking for a cozy mystery with some creepy factor, this might be the book for you. Sadly, I didn't love it and don't plan on picking up more of Webb's books in the future. ( )