Review: Good Tidings

Good Tidings by Terri Reid

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Two books, one author, three days. It would probably only take about a day to read these short and cozy mysteries by Terri Reid, but I typically start off my reading day nearing the night (since I'm third shift and that's the time I'm awake) and then finish it sometime after the new day has come around. I must say that these books are quite satisfying -- at the very least, I'm turning pages wanting to know how the mystery is solved.

Of course, these ARE pretty short stories from what I'm used to reading, so I'm not surprised that I've been finishing them up so quickly.

The second book of the Mary O'Reilly paranormal mysteries takes our two main heroes all the way to Mary's home city of Chicago in an investigation of an infant snatching. The deceased six year old big brother of the kidnapped infant is Mary's "client" this time; he is Joey Marcum who was able to remain by his family's side after death as his little brother's guardian angel. In this case then, little Joey makes for a pretty good spy in finding out what's going on around his brother and the infant snatchers and what they're doing.

We also get some insight into Mary's near-death experience as well as learn more about Bradley Alden's past. There's some forwarded romantic development as well as a lot of nice and warm moments among the O'Reilly family.

For starters, the writing style seems to be progressively getting better and better. I'd chance to say that the author could still use some editing as I've caught a lot of consistent grammatical errors and awkward word usage. But overall, just like the first book, it was a fun mystery experience. Good Tidings, however, wasn't as good as the first one despite having a more refined format and I think there was a little too much being slopped together from the kidnapping case and then moving into a drug/murder conspiracy. The transitioning felt a bit awkward, but it still managed to pull through.

What I'm loving about the Mary O'Reilly series so far is really the characters and their developments. I love Stanley and Rosie with a passion -- these two side characters are created as very witty, very loyal, yet brutally honest best friends to our heroine. I also like seeing the few side ghostly story arcs that take place so that we know that Mary doesn't simply attract all the crazy encounters that lead her into murder cases, kidnapping cases, rape cases (can I use the word rape in these reviews?)... the like. We see that there are some ghostly visitors who just have a simple unfinished matter that needs to attend to and then they can move on and be at peace.

While I'm continuing to enjoy the series, I didn't quite care for this second book as much as I had enjoyed the first one. And so here's hoping that the third one is just as gripping.



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