Mystery Monday

While on vacation last week, I finished up the last two books currently out in the Ophelia and Abby series by Shirley Damsgaard.

#5 The Witch is Dead: In the fifth installment of this fun series, Great Aunt Dot visits from Appalachia adding a new character and some fun. Although, she's not quite as crazy as Grandma Mazur from the Stephanie Plum series, she adds a bit of humor to the story. Her particular talent is seeing fairies and tippling homemade elderberry wine. Aunt Dot joins Tink and Ophelia on their latest adventure trying to figure out who killed the local undertaker. Tink also winds up kidnapped throwing Ophelia into a hysterical mess. Our friendly Federal agent Cobra/Ethan (from #4) makes an appearance again.

Although I liked Aunt Dot's character quite a bit, this storyline didn't grab me as much as some of the others. I'm hoping the series continues to hold my interest. I've found that it's at about book 5 or 6 where a series starts to go downhill a bit or the author has a hard time coming up with new ideas that are really good. I think Damsgaard has kept the series fresh and interesting, but this one was probably one of my least favorite.

#6 The Witch's Grave: This is the most recent in the Ophelia and Abby series. Ophelia meets a wonderful man (an author) at a fundraising event and winds up going on a walk with him where he gets shot right in front of her! She is very attracted to him and feels awful about what happened. She becomes quite obsessed with figuring out who shot him and two other people as well.

This book also takes a little different approach than the rest and has a second storyline set during WWII. It's the story of a couple working to help people during the war. This story comes to Ophelia in her dreams and Abby explains that perhaps reincarnation is at work. Abby must make a change in the present to help fix what went wrong in this person's past life. It was an interesting concept and the reincarnation story took place in France and discussed how Jews were gathered and sent to camps from France; first to Drancy and then to Auschwitz.

Ironically, I'm currently reading Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay which tackles this very subject. Anyhoo, I liked this last chapter of the Ophelia and Abby series and I sort of enjoyed that the story wasn't as much about Tink.

Allison's review of #6 can be found here.