Customer Reviews

Cozy in Kansas: In the Dead of Winter/Bye, Bye Bertie/For Whom the Wedding Bell Tolls (Ivy Towers Mystery Omnibus) (America Loves a Mystery: Kansas)

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Nancy Mehl's Winter Break anthology is highly recommended for a pleasant, absorbing and cheering mental vacation.
Main character Ivy Towers is the kind of person who would make a great best friend: self-deprecating, humorous, yet idealistic and compassionate. She has returned to a town that she remembers fondly from childhood. The death of her aunt is a shock, but spunky Ivy is undeterred in her determination to follow in Bitty's footsteps as a bookseller. Complications and romance follow.
Mehl is deft with her characterizations, creating three-dimensional small-town people with believable flaws and deep-seated values.
The gentle Christian message is a natural part of life in Winter Break, and strongly influences Ivy's attitudes. Anybody who has lived in a small town has encountered the same ups and downs of life there, encompassing both the tragic and the hilarious.
COZY IN KANSAS is a real treat, because the reader is able to trace several phases of Ivy's life in one volume. I'm looking forward to the fourth in the series, THERE GOES SANTA CLAUS.

Cozy in Kansas includes three complete romance mysteries for the price of one. In the first mystery Ivy Towers returns to Winter Break, Kansas to run her Aunt Bitty's Bygone Bookstore while she investigates her aunt's death with the help of Deputy Sheriff Amos Parker. The next two mysteries continue with her acting as an amateur sleuth. Nancy Mehr's books combine humor, romance and many plot twists and turns. I highly recommend her books. They make great gifts and also would be good as book club selections.

I read this series out of order. Each one was a stand alone book and enjoyable. I read all three because it was such an enjoyable world to join. The people were precious and every character was a welcome addition to the stories. It was almost a shame that one of those people could do wrong. And yet as art imitates life that is the very truth. People are fallen and no matter how kind people are those apart from Christ there is no hope.

Cozy In Kansas is a compilation of three novels in one book. They are all light-weight mysteries that are easy to read and very enjoyable. The townspeople in Winter Break, Kansas are a great bunch of down-home folks. They remind me of people I have met in other rural communities, truly lovable. The author, very kindly, leaves clues to the solution of the mystery throughout each novel. I found Cozy in Kansas to be a well-written book. One I may revisit at some point in the future. I recommend it to all you mystery fans.

I absolutely love these three books in one; very well written and enjoyable for anyone who loves cozy mysteries. The Christian overtones are threaded throughout but I don't feel they would distract a non-Christian reader. Nancy Mehl is an excellant writer and I look forward to reading other books by her.