3.5 Stars

I like the setting and characters in this one. Book one started with cranberry harvest (very interesting) at Cranberry Cove - Lake Michigan. Good mystery and writing. ( )

Monica Albertson comes to Cranberry Cove to help her half-brother Jeff. Jeff's cranberry farm is about to go bankrupt and she wants to help him keep his business. Just after she notices some anomalies in the farm's financial records, the former manager's body is found floating in the cranberry bog during harvest. Apparently, Sam Culbert was stealing from the farm the entire time Jeff was fighting in Afghanistan, making Jeff the prime suspect in his murder. But, Monica knows Jeff isn't a murderer. She has to find the real killer before her brother ends up in jail!

I love cranberries. I buy a year's supply each fall when they appear in stores for the holiday season. I keep them in the freezer and put them into my morning protein shake almost every day. So when I saw a cozy series set on a cranberry farm, I had to read it! There are four books in the series.

I enjoyed Monica as a main character. She is intelligent and dedicated to helping her brother. Jeff is recovering from injuries sustained in Afghanistan and really does need her help. The one character I really didn't like....and that almost made me stop reading the book on more than one occasion....is the overbearing stepmother, Gina. I found the character just a bit too annoying. Gina did mellow out and became helpful when the mystery got rolling. That's what kept me reading when I wanted to jump into the book and tell her to shut up. Lord have mercy -- what an annoying character! lol

All in all, a nice start to a cozy series! Since this series is a relatively short one....just four books...I will definitely read the rest of the series. I liked the side theme of a cranberry farm....there was a lot of information on growing and harvesting cranberries sprinkled in with the mystery. I enjoyed it!

This is definitely a cozy mystery. No cursing, no sex, no graphic descriptions of murder victims. An enjoyable "clean'' read. On to book 2!

This is the first book by Peg Cochran that I've read. She has written several other cozy series including the Gourmet De-Lite series, Lucille Mysteries and a new series, Murder, She Reported. ( )

Monica Albertson left a failed restaurant in Chicago to help her brother on his cranberry farm in Michigan. He bought the farm hoping to make a go of it, but so far it's been tough. So now she's out in the bogs with the other workers trying to harvest cranberries, when her rake catches on something in the bottom -- and up comes a body. It turns out that it's Sam Culbert, the man she saw her brother Jeff arguing with a day ago, and now she fears that Jeff will be at the top of the police detective's list. So, along with her stepmother Gina -- who arrived unexpectedly -- she sets out to find a killer who seems to have been able to escape any notice so far...

I really wanted to like this book, but unfortunately, it ran so slow. It was difficult to get into the beginning of it, and while cranberry farms might be interesting to some, they aren't to me. I'd go so far as to say if I were on vacation, unlike tourists in the area, I wouldn't even bother with a tour of one. (I do like cranberry juice, but that's as far as it goes for me).

Anyway, Monica is not the kind of person I'd like to know. She's judgmental of others, even going so far as to make fun of her stepmother, who apparently is a decent person and treats her like a daughter. The only complaint I have with Gina is she calls Jeff "Jeffie," and what grown woman still calls her son something like that? That's my husband's name, and I'd cringe if my mother-in-law even used it once.

Monica herself is a very bland personality, and I almost gave up on the book because of that, but I wanted to see it through anyway. I figured out the murderer the minute the person stepped onto the page, which isn't a good thing; also I felt there should have been some clue along the way, but there was nothing until the end. Monica also put herself into a stupid situation because, as I like to say, she couldn't think on her feet and didn't put it together until the last moment.

There are some great-sounding recipes at the back, so at least that's a plus. However, I'm not sure if I'll read the next in the series or not. ( )

After the failure of her small café and the death of her fiancé, Monica Albertson flees Chicago to come to Cranberry Cove, Michigan to help her half-brother, Jeff, run his struggling cranberry farm. Monica keeps the Sassamanash Farm store supplied with fresh-baked cranberry scones, muffins, coffee cake, and cranberry salsa. Jeff is newly home from a tour in Afghanistan. He bought the cranberry farm from Sam Culbert, also the mayor of Cranberry Cove. Sam Culbert ran the farm for Jeff while he was on duty, and when Monica goes over the books, she discovers that Sam was embezzling money from the cranberry farm while he was running it for Jeff. When Jeff learns of Sam's betrayal, he is angry.

Cranberry harvest season is upon Sassamanash Farm. As the harvest begins, a body is found floating in one of the cranberry bogs. The body is that of Sam Culbert, and he didn't die naturally. The police and the entire town seem to suspect Jeff of the crime. Monica knows many soliders come back from Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress, and Jeff's paralyzed arm is the tip of the iceberg for him, but he wouldn't murder somebody, would he?

As Monica works to clear her brother's name, she discovers many people had reasons to dislike Sam Culbert other than Jeff. He was abusive to his wife. He regularly raised the rent on the shops he owned in town, putting some of them out of business. There is talk that he bought votes in the last mayoral election and cheated his way to becoming mayor.

I actually read the second book in this series before going back and reading this book. It was too bad because I guessed the murderer based on a character that appeared in the first book but was absent in the second book. My recommendation is to read this series in order! However, I did enjoy this book very much. I liked the small town feel, and I found learning about cranberry harvests interesting. Foodies will like the descriptions of the cranberry-based foods and recipes. All in all, it's a great start to a series. ( )

Nice beginning, likable characters, not too eccentric, Monica doesn't try too hard at detecting (which is good) ( )