Review: Eclairs, Scares and Haunted Home Repairs by Erin Johnson

Posted March 16, 2020 by Lola in Fantasy, Mystery, Review / 4 Comments

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Eclairs, Scares & Haunted Home RepairsEclairs, Scares & Haunted Home Repairs (Spells & Caramels #9)
by Erin Johnson

My Rating: 4 stars

Genre: Paranormal Cozy Mystery
Age Category: Adult
Type of romance: MF

Blurb:
A bakehouse in the making. A dangerous ghost in the tower. Will their welcome to the neighborhood be short-lived?

Imogen wants nothing more than to complete her sweet dream. With her adoring fiancé Hank at her side, the witch and her friends dive into renovations for their new home and soon-to-be bakery. But all their efforts seem futile when they wake to find the house eerily ripped apart all over again…

As Imogen examines her humble abode’s shady history, she discovers evidence for a malevolent spirit living inside. But with less-than-welcoming neighbors keeping a close, suspicious watch, she wonders if it’s not the dead but the living who pose the biggest threat…

Will Imogen root out the culprit, or will her culinary future collapse under the weight of an unsolved murder?

Eclairs, Scares & Haunted Home Repairs is the ninth book in the charming Spells & Caramels paranormal cozy mystery series. If you like lovable characters, chilling twists, and enchanting adventures, then you’ll love Erin Johnson’s marvelous tale.

My Review

I am always happy to be back in this world for another adventure with Imogen and her friends. And despite some issues I have with the stories, they are just so fun and I always enjoy reading them. And I love Iggy. I really like these characters and the mysteries and the fun atmosphere these books have with a tinge of magic.

In this book the characters have bought a house, but something is not right. Strange things are happening and they have to figure out what’s going on. What happened in the house? Why did the previous owners left? What’s the whole story? Is the house haunted? What is causing all these strange phenomena? There is a lot to figure out. The story started off a bit slow at first in my opinion, but that’s mostly because their progress gets undone every time and that was just frustrating to read about and I didn’t get why they wouldn’t first figure out what’s going on before putting more time and money (not sure how they can afford all these repairs anyway) in it.

Slowly the pieces of the puzzle start to come together, what’s going on with the house and more information about the previous owners comes to light. There is a great twist toward the end and I liked the way all those little hints we got throughout the story fall on their place. I really liked that reveal. I did however found it strange that in a magical community no one ever thought of the thing that what was causing part of the troubles. And for a group of witches they also seemed awfully afraid of ghosts. But even with those issues, I thought it was an entertaining story and it kept my attention. The addition of the crows/ ravens also was interesting and while their change was a bit fast it was clear the author did her research about these animals.

The whole series follows this tight group of characters that grows with each book, they seem to pick up new friends everywhere. But it’s easy to remember who is who and every character has their place and their own personality. There is some relationship drama for the side characters. There are some some new characters and familiar ones that play a role in the story. And it’s just so fun to watch these characters all interact with each other.

I am still not sure what to think of the ending. This is exactly what I wanted to see happen in book 7, but now we’re 3 books further and that plot line is obviously forgotten. They have made their home here and settled and it’s clear the series just took a different direction after book 6. But now suddenly part of that forgotten plot line pop up again and I am not sure whether to be interested or not. Mostly I just think the book could’ve ended here with book 8 or the story should’ve continued with the main plot earlier. I am not sure, I feel conflicted about the whole thing. And I really didn’t like how Hank and Imogen went along with someone else their plans. It just rubbed me wrong as this is about them, not others. Ah well we’ll see what I think of book 10.

I like how the author incorporated the magic and paranormal world in this series, but there also seems to be some inconsistencies here and there. There are some things I would’ve expected a magical community to treat differently and someone could’ve used a spell for a certain something and didn’t and we even know that exact spell exists. Sometimes I still have a hard time figuring out how everything works. We suddenly find out there’s such a thing as necromancer, but is this just a different type of witch or what? It doesn’t really gets explained and explored as much as I like, but at the same time the whole series is just so fun to read. And I do like all those little touches about how magic comes in handy in their daily life, all those little hints are a lot of fun.

To summarize: I had a lot of fun reading this book. There is just something so fun about this series. I like the tight group of characters we follow in this series and the mysteries and adventures they land in the middle of. I do have some issues with things that happen in the book, but even so I enjoyed reading this book. The mystery is quite interesting in this one and I liked the reveal at the end and how everything suddenly fell on it’s place. The start did feel a bit slow as they don’t make much progress on the house. There also was something related to the house which seemed like a magical community should’ve been able to discover much earlier. And everyone is surprisingly afraid of ghosts. There are some minor things that didn’t quite make sense or aren’t explained as well as I would’ve liked. The overall story is awesome tough and it’s fun to read. I like the characters and reading about them. I am still not sure what to think of the ending, this is an event I wanted 3 books ago, not now and now it just feels like it doesn’t fit with the change of tone form the last few books. We’ll see what I think of it in book 10. Which is the last book in the series, it will be sad to say goodbye to these characters.

4 Stars

Links:
Goodreads
Bookbub
Amazon

You can also read my review on Goodreads, Bookbub and Amazon.

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4 responses to “Review: Eclairs, Scares and Haunted Home Repairs by Erin Johnson

  1. Oooh… a haunted house mystery! Love those!
    Now that is different how you got the ending you expected in a different book long after the story moved on in a different direction and is now back there again. Hopefully, that will all work out now with the future books.
    Sophia Rose recently posted…Review: Rookie Move by Sarina BowenMy Profile

    • The haunted house was an interesting addition. I was so surprised the ending suddenly went back to a plot line it long since deviated from, not sure whether to be excited or disappointed, only one book left in the series.

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