Foul Play at the Fair

Book Description: As more and more tourists flock to Celebration Bay, New York, to enjoy their seasonal festivals, the town is in need of a professional coordinator. Enter Manhattan event planner Liv Montgomery, tired of big-city stress and looking for an idyllic spot where she and her Westie terrier, Whiskey, can put down roots. The Harvest by the Bay Festival is Liv’s first chance to prove herself, and everything from apple bobbing to pumpkin painting goes perfectly—until the body of an itinerant juggler is discovered stuffed into an antique apple press.

With a murderer on the loose, town leaders threaten to shut down the upcoming Halloween and Christmas festivals. But the town’s livelihood is at stake, and there is no way Liv is going to let that happen, even if she has to solve the murder herself. No matter how many balls she needs to keep in the air, Liv is determined to find a killer who’s rotten to the core . . .
 

My Review: If this first book in Shelley Freydont's Celebration Bay Mystery Series doesn't put you in a fall/Halloween frame of mind, nothing will! While reading this book I longed to visit the quaint upstate New York locale to take part in their Harvest By the Bay Festival, followed by Haunted October. I loved the vivid descriptions of the town, particularly Liv's morning ritual of stopping at the Apple Of My Eye Bakery and the Buttercup Coffee Exchange. Even the crime scene has a "fall feel" to it when an unsavory character from the past returns and ends up dead in an antique apple press. Everyone seems to be a suspect in a town filled with secrets.

  

A couple characters I hope to see more of in future books are Liv's landlords, the Zimmerman sisters. Retired spinster schoolteachers, these sweet little ladies reminded me of the Baldwin sisters in The Waltons, and I think they would be fun sleuthing partners for Liv and her darling little Westie Whiskey.
 

FTC Full Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher with the request for a review.