Customer Reviews

Nail Biter (Home Repair Is Homicide Mysteries)

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

 

 

I love the "Home Repair is Homicide" series.. But I feel like they just keep getting more, and more depressing as the series continues.. It seems Jake loses touch with her son, and often becomes irrational and depressed. Not to mention what un-Godly business happens to Victor in this book.. I was in denial the entire time after I read the beginnings of his deal.. I was quite depressed and wanted badly to cry when I read the final words in this book.. I can't even begin to explain how terribly sad it was.. Especially if you're a big fan of this series and the characters.. After this installment it will never be the same..

I've read all the books, buying them in HB when they started coming out that way, but the last few in the series have had trouble keeping my attention. The series seems to be wallowing along lines I don't much care for. Truthfully, I read "cozy" mysteries more for the characters than the plot, but cozy shouldn't require or entail all the characters are annoyingly cutesey. I liked the gruff fat police chief, the dyslexic son, and of course Victor. But the last few stories, Sam has become unrecognizable, Wade and the police chief seem to plod in and out without showing much depth and less realism as time goes on. What is left is not engaging to me as a reader. Elli's cuteness, always too much for my taste or believability, is now overly compounded to the point of hypoglycemia by having a doll like daughter to add to her doll like self. And the appearance several books ago of the back from the dead father, who conveniently and coincidentally is also a fix it up guy, in spite of being "on the run" for years was just too much for me. I've actually found myself reading the last couple of novels mostly to see what Victor was up to, who is the only character that seems to have remained intact and interesting, and whose pique helped counter the cloying sweetness of Elli and the fix it up dad. Obviously Elli, being the sort of Watson to the main character's Holmes (or vice versa) has to stay, but if some one had to go, why not the annoyingly saintly father?

But alas not, and in this book the one leaven remaining that once livened this series' lump has now been lost. Or to put it more in the theme Home Repair, Nail Biter put the nail in the coffin for this series for me. I'm sure the author had her reasons, but I can't see much reason to read any future installments in the series.

I've had my ups and downs with this series, but have read every entry. There have been characters that I have always enjoyed in the series, George, Sam, though not recently, he seems to be suffering a late adolescence. Maggie has become a bit more flawed and therefore human; I enjoyed her "realness" before she truly had the depth to qualify as a fully formed character. There, of course, has always been Victor, the shining star, who brought edge and acerbic wit and humor to a town full of characters that were either too cutesy (Ellie and now her daughter), too wooden (Wade, forever and always, I'm convinced he is actually a blow-up doll with a looping track, more caricature than character, but I could overlook him considering his brief appearances, or when it comes to Jake recently, simply too neurotic.

I feel like this book is the turning point, if not for the series then for me. Actually, it isn't a turning point it is my jumping off point - I am officially done. The series has been a hodgepodge of okay and make it stop for quite a few books now, but I stayed hoping for a change. The change has come and it is detrimental, it has been alluded to in other posts so I won't elaborate, but I would ask Sarah Graves why and what are you thinking.

I have to question Jacobia's sanity and whether there is any truth to her shrewdness and New York know-it-all attitude. Forget that you rent your property to a coven of witches, but a man with only women and teenage girls in tow - I would ask coven or cult, shouldn't Jake do the same.

This book lacked feeling, the writing was disjointed, some plot points were convoluted, some of the character were so one-dimensional that I felt them tear in two as soon as I turned the page, and in the end I really could have cared less about who did it or why they did it, in fact I hardly cared that most of the characters were still standing and breathing.

Perhaps, enough is enough, if not for the author the definitely for me. Steer clear of this entry and read anew or reread the earlier books in the series it will be a better way to spend a few hours of your time.

Jacobia Tiptree gave up her Financial Consultant job in New York City to move to Eastport Maine, partly because she was sick of her job, but mainly to get her teenage son away from bad influences which had turned him into a drug addict as a young teenager.

Things had really turned around since she bought her fixer-upper house and has spent the last years turning her house into a home and solving all the murders that suddenly seem to occur on a regular basis in Eastport.

Now Jake and her best friend Ellie White have bought a beachfront house, planning on fixing it up and renting. But when a coven of witches asks to rent the house, they go ahead and do it before doing the necessary repairs, which results in almost daily excursions to the house as this group seems unable to change lightbulbs, let alone fix any other minor problem that seems to come up.

It's on one of these trips that Jake trips over the body of Eugene Dibble in the shed behind the house.

Then Wanda, the teenage, mute daughter of one of the renters disappears, Jake goes into full detective mode as she is not only determined to solve the murder, but also to find the missing teenager, who she believes is in horrible danger.

Highlights:

Victor - Jake's ex-husband, A prominent brain surgeon. In the first book in this series, when this guy showed up, I groaned. I'm sick of cozy's thinking the lead always have to have a jerk of a husband, boyfriend, ex-husband, ex-boyfriend involved in her life. But as the series has evolved, so has Victor. He's gone from annoying jerk, to the funniest character in the book. What he lacks in social skills, he more than makes up for his giving up his career, moving to Eastport and starting a trauma clinic.

George Valentine - Local Handyman, married to Ellie White. He's the guy who can fix anything and seems to have a lot more common sense than a lot of other characters in the book.

Wade - He's the harbor pilot and gun repairer. The reasons I like him so much, is that he's very helpful to Jake but stays out of all the drama involving Victor, Jake & their son Sam.

Lowlights

The mystery. Most of the mysteries have been interesting, but this was boring. If you're going to use child abuse as part of a storyline, please don't have everyone claim they were abused. Several false stories are told about abuse in the book, just to hide real motives. The plot behind the murder is so complicated, when all the killer had to do, (since they were tracking their victim) is to walk up to them one night and shoot them, as there was no real connection that would have made the police suspect the killer.

Jake & Ellie take such ridiculous risks in this story and because of their stupidity, real innocent people are severely injured or killed. (I'm not saying they're nice, but they are innocent in this case).

The Ending. In most of the reviews we're all complaining about the same thing, but don't want to ruin it for anyone who hasn't read it yet. The one problem with doing something irreversible, is that it can't be corrected. There is no way to fix this and it changes the entire complexion of the storyline.

Small Questions

Jake was a big time Financial Consultant in New York, she had to have made millions, yet she is always worried that she can't afford to fix her house up? Victor was one of the most prominent surgeons in the world, and has to have made millions also, yet she resents the money he spends on their son.

Why did Ellie White keep her maiden name when she married George Valentine? Ellie is always worried about people talking about her and being part of gossip and keeping up traditions. I would thinking keeping your maiden name would have caused a lot of talk in this small town. And after reading, "Dead Cat Bounce" the first book in the series, where you got to meet Ellie's parents you would thinking changing her name would be at the top of her list.

Having left Wall St. behind upon finding her spouse Victor cheating on her, and her son Sam using drugs, Jacobia "Jake" Tiptree divorced her husband and took her son to Eastport, Maine. There she eventually married Wade Sorenson and with her best friend Ellie White buy a beachfront fixer-upper with plans to lease the house especially when the tourists come to New England.

Currently they rent the place out to a coven of amateur witches who Jake believes must have cursed Ellie and her as they seem to always need a repair or two at the most inopportune moments. While a storm rages, Jake, toolkit in hand, arrives at the cottage to make a repair. In the nearby tool shed, Jake finds the corpse of thieving street preacher Eugene Dibble. Everyone had a motive to see Dibble leave town but nobody knows who would go to the extreme of shooting him. After coven member ex-cop Jenna Durrell compromised the crime scene, the others claim they were busy conjuring so heard nothing over the storm. After another incident occurs, with Ellie helping Jake investigates.

The latest "Home repair Is Murder" amateur sleuth mystery is an intriguing tale due to a strong who-done-it. Jake assumes one of the coven members killed Dibble, but finds no motive beyond that no one wanted the petty thief in town. Besides playing 1823 and dealing with Victor more than ever, Jake is at her tough best even when she and her partner deal with a NAIL BITER life and death crisis. Readers will take immense delight with Jake's investigation so she can further repair and lease her fixer-upper.

Harriet Klausner

i've been reading the series since the first book, and have enjoyed them all, if to varying degrees. but this one...i had a lot of trouble getting into it.

i found jake's behavior irrational and self-destructive, not to mention somewhat stupid; i thought that several of the issues were included because they're currently popular, not because they were integral to the story; other plot developments were cliched; the reactions of some of the characters were beyond belief; the story didn't flow as well as usual and a lot of the writing seemed forced; and i skimmed the last pages just to get done with the book.

the cover art was nice.

As the ninth book in this series, it's also the strongest. Graves' story is not filled with too many characters or too many plotlines. It's a compelling, fast-paced story with personal tragedy for Jacobia "Jake" Tiptree.

Jake and her best friend, Ellie, have rented a small house to a "coven of witches." Within the month, a man is found murdered in their shed, drugs are discovered, and a teenage girl goes missing. Jake's own past pushes her to search for the girl, despite personal danger. It also pushes her to ignore the personal issues with her ex-husband.

As Jake hurtles towards danger and disaster, the reader rushes along in this suspenseful story.

To start with, the premise is preposterous that these two women who have no background in police or detective work, no intelligence background or anything that would suit them for this line of work would be recruited to find a missing person. Besides being woefully underqualified to do this work, the way they went about it made little sense and was very unrealistic. I found the constant home repair interludes to be horribly annoying. The characters, both the protagonists and antagonists were poorly drawn out. The twist at the end, including the antagonist's motivation was silly and not remotely believable. All in all a terrible novel.

Carl Alves - author of Two For Eternity

Jacobia and Ellie hope to "flip" a derelict house and make some money in real estate but first they rent the property for two weeks to a group studying the "dark arts." A storm, a murdered body, a drug dealer, missing pills, a kidnapping, a mysterious box, would-be witches, a con man, a heart attack, a brain tumor, a couple of scenes of pointless mayhem, another storm and a Made-for-TV bang-bang finish. Sounds pretty exciting, huh? Well, maybe it is the laid-back demeanor of the down-east Maine persona but the truth is this is pretty boring. I have not read the other books in the series, and I do not intend to.

As with all the Home Repair is Homicide books, Nail Biter is full of suspense, danger and humor. I thoroughly enjoyed every page.