Customer Reviews

A Groom with a View (Jane Jeffry Mysteries, No. 11)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I've been following the Jane Jeffrey series and I think they keep getting better. I enjoyed this book and felt it's one of the most entertaining. Jane and Shelly help a neighbor with her wedding primarily so Jane can get a new car. It is being held in an old monestary turned hunting lodge in the country that might harbor buried treasure. When the wedding guests and helpers show up things really get interesting as they are an eclectic bunch. That night, after a storm, the lights go out and the story takes a spooky turn. This is a great book for cozy lovers and mystery readers looking for light-hearted fun. My only quibble with the book is the motive of the murderer but it didn't stop my enjoyment of the story.

In Chicago, after attending a successful party thrown by Jane Jeffry, Livvy Thatcher decides to hire her hostess to run her own wedding party. Though not a professional party thrower, Jane agrees to arrange the April nuptials at Livvy's family hunting lodge. Livvy enlists the help of her friend and neighbor Shelly Nowack.

Livvy and Shelly arrive early at the hunting lodge to make sure everything runs smoothly. They quickly meet the caretaker, a lazy, brooding Uncle Joe, who offers little help and seems to always vanish when they need him. They soon hear rumors of a hidden treasure and that a country club will be built on the site of the lodge. However, neither Livvy and Shelly could anticipate the problems that night starting with a storm that shuts down the electricity. That morning, the florist finds the body of the seamstress lying dead on the floor. Initially the elderly individual appeared to have slipped down the stair case to her death. However, the police find evidence that someone pushed the victim. Worried about the wedding, Jane and Shelly begin their own not so discreet inquiries. Both of the ladies are in for a surprise when another murder follows.

The long running Jane Jeffry amateur sleuth series remains very fresh with its eleventh tale that highlights the lead protagonist and her best friend. Jane, Shelly, and Mel (Jane's boy friend) retain a midwest charm that augments an entertaining story line, which borrows elements from a modern gothic. The secondary characters are fun to follow, especially the wedding party. Jill Churchill continues to make the Jeffry novels some of the best tales the sub-genre has to offer.

Harriet Klausner

I have always enjoyed the Jane Jeffry books by Jill Churchill, they are well-plotted overall and very entertaining -- but "A Groom with a View" definitely ranks as one of her best. When poor Jane gets roped into putting together a wedding with nearly zero assistance from the bride or her family, then stumbles on a dead body in the dark to further complicate what already leans toward disaster -- well, it seems almost too much for the frazzled housewife/mother/sometimes novelist, even with the help of gal-pal Shelley. But what makes this book amazing is Jill Churchill's incredible sense of place; through minimal description of setting and even character, you feel like you are right there with these people, in this gloomy old wreck of a club where the wedding is being held. Add to that a nicely-plotted mystery ingenious in its simplicity, almost to the point where you are sympathetic for the killer, and you have one of the best of the series. I always look forward to the next Jane Jeffry mystery (come on, "Mulch Ado About Nothing"!!), but this one was one of the most entertaining whodunnits this mystery lover has ever read.

Jane Jeffry is planning a wedding. No she is not the bride, her role is the wedding planner. While Jane and frend Shelly trie to turn the hunting lodge of the bride's family into a beautiful place for a wedding Jane has to deal with intering aunts, a florist who is digging up the land and a dressmaker who does not have the bridemaids' dresses ready. Oh did I lmost forgot, the seamstress is dead and the groom becomes the killer's next target.This is another wonderful installment in the Jane Jeffry series. I could harsly wait for Jane and Shelly"s next adventure.

This installment of Jill Churchill's Jane Jeffry series is a bit of a disappointment. I did enjoy reading it, but missed the snap that Jane and Shelly have together. Oddly, a lot of the messes that they get into in other books are missing too. Ms. Churchill had a great idea for this book but I feel that she failed to follow through as well in this book as she usually does. I'm not saying that this book is not worth reading. In fact, read them all. This series is a lot of fun and a lot of laugh out loud funny jokes. I would just say that this installment is a bit weaker than the other Jane Jeffry Mystery books. But still well worth your time, she is still one of my favorite author.

No, she doesn't work as one, but she always seems to bounce back--gracefully and easily--from the somewhat strange events in her life. Or, to put it another way, she bounces the lemons handed to her by life (which everyone knows is the way to make a lemon produce more juice) and turns them into stunning versions of lemonade, lemon pie, or whatever strikes her fancy.

Of course, the forty-something widow also has three wonderful kids, a full-steam-ahead next door neighbor and best friend, Shelley Nowack, and a to-die-for-guy, police detective Mel VanDyne. Well, maybe not quite so far on that latter, but he is a 'certified' dish, no doubt about it. Even better, he seems to really like and respect Jane as a person. High marks in anyone's book, I should think.

If you've read any of the previous atrociously-punned titles about Jane, et al, you know that she and Shelley seem to find trouble under nearly every cabbage leaf they stumble over. The most recent book was no exception, distributing corpses for Christmas. But, out of that unseeming circumstance, an unusual opportunity made itself known to Jane. Livvy Thatcher is getting married, and being so impressed with Jane's management of the Christmas debacle, she asks Jane to organize and plan her wedding. Well, Jane's never done this before, but neither is she one to let such a trifling detail get in her way.

Problem number one is the scene of the wedding. It is an old family estate--complete with tales of ghost and buried treasure--some hour-and-a-half west (or thereabouts) of Chicago; a former hunting lodge that had previously been a monastery. Disregarding her qualms, Jane plunges in, arranging flowers (you, too, will 'love' Larkspur!), food, bridesmaid's dresses, the bride's gown, and the music, not to mention assigning rooms to the stay-over guests, either at the lodge or the nearest motel. She didn't however, arrange for murder. That was problem number two, and brings Mel to the scene to confer with the local constabulary.

Problem number six or so is the semi-reluctance of the bride to get to the point of being able to say 'I do'. Not to worry. Livvy may indeed be married, but she's not going to be a wife. At least not for a while yet. An assortment of oddly-matched guests, and even more odd family on both sides, suddenly seem to swirl all around the not-so-very festivities before Jane manages to unveil the killer.

I loved the different setting and the somewhat more-than-eccentric elderly Aunts and Uncle, and all the big and little details that Jane had to master in order to produce a perfectly beautiful wedding. But--although the killer and the motive for having done so did make a certain amount of sense within the confines of the story, it still sort of came out of left field. There really wasn't much build-up in the way of clues as to just who really was the fiend. Or why. Still, though, once unmasked, there could have been no other culprit. Will Jane continue in her new career field? Stay tuned. . .

I'm a big fan of Ms. Churchill and the Jane Jeffry series, and while I enjoyed this book, I definitely didn't feel it was one of her best.

I think what threw it off for me was the whole premise of Jane being asked by a total stranger to plan their wedding, and her agreeing to it. It would've made more sense to me if Shelley had been the one planning the wedding, since she's always been presented as the "take-charge" part of the team in all the previous books, and Jane had gone along to assist her. The whole thing being set up as it was just seemed odd to me, and not at all in character for the Jane and Shelley I've come to know through reading this series.

All in all, I still recommend this series highly. This latest installment wasn't bad...it just wasn't up to the par I'm used to with Ms. Churchill.

This was an awful book. The characters are poorly defined, the plot lacks interest and development, and there's just nothing interesting in it. An old woman falls down the stairs and dies and although the killer is later identified, there's never a reason as to how the elderly victim was lured to the top of the stairs. The main character brushes past someone in a dark hallway and doesn't stop them or say "who are you?" and is not able to identify anything about them the next day. Someone shines a flashlight in the main character's face in a dark room and she doesn't say "who are you?" or try to identify any characterisics about the person....just goes back to bed. Completely unrealistic. The use of the derogatory term "skivvy" to identify a kitchen worker was vulgar and was used over and over, sometimes in every paragraph for 7-8 paragraphs. The main character is unappealing - sort of like a petulant spoiled child and as the wedding planner in this book she spent way too much time sitting around in chairs and wondering if she should go do her job. Which it seems she didn't do much of to begin with since she didn't sent out the invitations, didn't organize the bride's party or the bachelor party, didn't do this and didn't do that, didn't organize the caterers, etc. She DID pick out the color for the bridesmaid dresses, however, and we heard over and over again how great the color was and what good job she did with that. Overall, this book should never have been printed.

I loved this book, and I love this whole series. I love Jane and Shelley. I love the coziness of this series.

This series takes place in Chicago suberbs, but in this book, we escape to a hunting lodge for the entire length of the book. Jane is hired to do the planning for a wedding to be held at the lodge. The lodge is cozy, there is a chef, a florist, a seamstress, a groundsman (Uncle Joe). There are lots of rooms in the lodge. It gets dark and spooky and electricity goes out . . . can you imagine?!!!

We go through the wedding planning stages, the bridal shower, the rehearsal dinner, the bachelor party, bridesmaids get fitted for their dresses. We find out a lot about the characters, the bridesmaids who stay at the lodge for a few days before the wedding, the two aunts, Uncle Joe, and other various family members and characters.

This book is cozy because it takes place out at the cozy lodge. And any book with Jane and Shelley is cozy. They are two fun people. There is food, coffee, coziness, and spookiness at this lodge. It made for a great and cozy escapade.

This is a mystersy novel, therefore there are dead bod(ies). Who and why would someone kill someone at a wedding?

I love these books so much. I am saddened that I am almost finished. (I read a few of them out of order.) For anyone who loves fun cozy mysteries, I definitely recommend these books. There are hilarious and fun.

I love a wedding themed cozy and A Groom with a View has everything from the initial planning to the reception. Unfortunately, it is also hugely predictable. The killer was obvious when first introduced, well before anyone was murdered. You didn't know who was going to die or why, but it was certain that one specific person was going to be behind it.

A Groom with a View focuses on Jane, Shelley and the wedding. Mel shows up later, but none of the kids were present. There was no domesticity like most of the other books, which I didn't mind but may disappoint fans who enjoy watching Jane juggle single motherhood and murder investigations.

The concept of the mystery was solid and the reasons behind the murder were creative, yet convincing. Nothing could save this book from mediocrity because we could never get in Jane's shoes and try to sleuth out the killer. Knowing how things would turn out throughout the book with the only surprise being the reasons behind the murder makes A Groom with a View less than thrilling.