Red Wolf's Room

While I love books that incorporate baking, mystery, Sherlock Holmes, a new town and a dog, the book Two Parts Sugar, One Part Murder by Valerie Burns wasn't my cup of tea. I was surprised and disappointed. The cover may be indicative of this. Maddy is on the cover, holding her phone for a selfie and several lopsided cakes surround her. While the cakes are symbolic of her inability to cook or bake, she is often on social media, posting pictures of food, her new dog and her new business. However, someone wasn't paying attention to her wardrobe; aprons are supposed to protect the wearer's shirt and, for some reason, it was drawn with very long drawstrings. If this was indicative of Maddy not knowing how an apron works since she's never in the kitchen, it's overkill. Maddy is intelligent and would know how to put an apron on. I like the play on the series' title: "Baker Street" because it's a baking series and the characters talk about Sherlock Holme

  Image by Clay Banks on Unsplash I'd like to take a moment and say, this is my 100th post. Cheers! What Is Second-Person Point of View? The narrative of first-person perspective is told from the viewpoint of "I" while that of third-person is the name of the protagonist/narrator along with their pronouns. The narrative of second-person perspective is told from the viewpoint of "you." However, "you" isn't as straightforward as you might think. Generally, yes, "you" refers to the reader and is used as an immersion technique, but there are other variations of "you" that we'll see further down. Second-person POV is probably best known from the "Choose Your Own Adventure" style of books and games.  I love Diane Callahan's videos on all aspects of writing. Callahan provides various book (and movie) examples of the second-person POV in the video below. While it's a lesser used POV and argued to be risky, there ar

Summary  In the realm of Azenor, there is a fortress in the clouds that was the Seren Duchy. But the Duke was assassinated by his closest friends. As they fled the mountains, the dying Duke cast a curse upon the land, making it so the people's nightmares would come to life among the streets of each town and village when each new moon rose. To fight these nightmares, magicians were designated as wardens at each place to protect the people. Clementine "Clem" Madigan grew up as a magician and warden apprentice to her father until two brothers of one of the other duchies challenges him for his position. After losing their home to the Vesper brothers, Clem makes it her mission to get close to one of them and find anything to take the Vesper family down, getting her home back in the process.  But as she infiltrates one of the brother's homes and becomes his warden partner while wearing a glamour, Clem's character is tested again and again so that even she is wondering j

  After reading Footsteps in the Dark , I tried to find more obscure female mystery writers that are not quite so well known and found The Crime at Black Dudley by Margery Allingham. What interested me was the dinner party that turns into murder. It reminded me of the Hercules Poirot mystery Lord Edgeware Dies and Clue .  Unfortunately, the murder gets upstaged for the second half of the book by another crime, and the solution to the first mystery was unnecessarily dragged out for me. I lost interest in the last third of the book and just wanted it to end. The book is written in true Roaring Twenties lingo, so there were quite a few times where I couldn't understand what the characters were saying, even with context.  In the reviews I read before picking up this book, I learned that Albert Campion is Margery Allingham's detective, but his debut novel (this book) does not have him as the protagonist and frankly, he's not even a detective. He is strangely almost always upbe