Class Reunions Can Be Murder -- Every Wife Has A Story; A Carol and Jim Andrews Baby Boomer Mystery (A Baby Boomer Mystery Book 4)

In this book Carol and her friends organize a school reunion. Memories both good and bad are shared and at the reunion one of the planners is found dead The former all girl school is taking on a renovation for senior housing. During the reunion the ladies in charge of the reunion help bring the killer to justice.

Against her will, Carol Andrews agreed to be on a committee planning the fortieth anniversary of graduation from Mount Saint Francis Academy. Joining her are her three best friends from those school days, all of whom had remained friends. The school, located in a beautiful old mansion, had been turned into a senior living facility. The night before the reunion, the committee members decided to sleep there, partly for memories and partly to be able to get an early start on the preparations. As Carol and her best friend Nancy opened the door to their room, they discover that it was not locked. They entered the room and discovered someone was already sleeping there. A closer inspection revealed that the person was dead. The story then went into flashback. Before the first committee meeting, another classmate, Meg, showed up and demanded to be on the committee as well. Carol had very unpleasant memories of her. Entering high school divided the her and her three friends as they got involved in different groups, but she blamed Meg for her worst experience. She decided to let bygones be bygones and invited her to the first meeting. The woman showed up for the first meeting, bringing three other classmates with her. She inquired about the others at the meeting but said nothing about herself. It turned out the other three friends also had negative feelings about Meg as well. Because the group refused to adopt one of Meg’s suggestions for the reunion, she stopped attending the meetings. Later questions arose about what Meg had been doing the past forty years. Back to the dead woman in Carol’s room. At first the coroner ruled her death a suicide. But Carol and her friends didn’t believe that. They decided to verify. Meanwhile, a book was coming out the day of the reunion, an expose of life in a Catholic girls’ high school. The author was unknown but the picture on the cover was Mount Saint Francis Academy. Needless to say, the class members were very upset. As many people who attend class reunions might have experienced, in many ways while people have changed, the members often revert to their old behaviors. That was true in CLASS REUNIONS CAN BE MURDER. After the story ended, Susan Santangelo added an essay about bullying by girls that has some very important information. She also added several recipes, based on food served at the reunion, that have both the original recipe and revised ones with fewer calories. The story moved fairly well. There are witticisms and puns galore. Most of them related to getting old even though they were only fifty eight. Examples included “Jim always made the morning coffee. It was one of the few perks (pun intended) of his being retired.” Each chapter opened with a humorous observation: “I got great news at the supermarket the other day. Campbell’s alphabet soup now comes in a large type version.” “I changed my computer password to ‘incorrect.” That way, if I log in with the wrong one, the computer will tell me, ‘Your password is incorrect....’” One big editing error had Carol leaving her dog in her car for several hours and then when she got home, her husband told her what he had been doing with the dog. Santangelo also unnecessarily referred incidents in previous books in the series. The mansion had been donated to the local nuns with the stipulation that “the building be used primarily to educate and nurture young women.” The book didn’t explain how the nuns were able to convert it legally into a senior residence. This book was a free download.

There are just the right number of characters to give this series enough variation to make each book unique. I also like the different quotations at the begin I g of each chapter.

Class Reunions Can Be Murder--Every Wife Has A...is about Carol, Nancy, Mary Alice, and Claire who have stayed friends since their school days at Mount Saint Francis Academy. Almost the first part of the book is about the planning of their 40th High School Reunion. Who is going to be in charge, who's doing the invitations, etc. Carol and her husband Jim are known for throwing fun parties and her friend Nancy wants her to plan the reunion. Carol is not eager to jump on board with this idea, but eventually finds herself and the others planning the reunion. The Academy is being transformed into an adult home. So before it's no longer their school as they know it, Carol and her friends decide to take a tour of the Academy one last time before the reunion and the take-over of the building by the company making the renovations. Everything is fine until Meg, an old classmate shows up and wants to run the reunion plans. She was the class bully and when she found her ideas for the reunion weren't being accepted, she went storming out of the committee meeting. Carol and her friends they will stay the night in one of the newly renovated rooms so they can be there early to get things going for the reunion. There's just one problem, Meg is found dead in the room that Carol and Nancy were supposed to occupy. It was deemed a suicide by the police, but was it? Carol who has been known to help the police solve other cases, starts her own investigation. Will Carol be able to prove the police department wrong and make them look further when things she finds out don't add up to a suicide? Will her friends jump on board to help her solve this mystery? The story line is well thought out and the plot of it is good, but it is at a slow pace and the climax to the story is short lived. But it is still a good book to read.

Unfortunately, the author’s first person style tended to grate on me, as she continually shared things with the reader as if with a best friend. This made a good plot rather more tedious than it should have been.

The plot could have carried the story with more detail, but the author's chattiness is intrusive and it was a relief to get to the end of the book. The ending itself fell into place far too easily as if the story had run out of steam.

The eriter's style brings you right into the story. She makes you feel like you are right there with her. I had to laugh at so many of her chapter introductions. I think most of us 50 and 60 year old women can relate to some of her descriptions. Truly a delightful story.

This was a fun read. The Author has a style of writing that appeals to me. I would probably recommend this book to those who want a read that doesn't make them cringe with the language the characters use, or the things they get up to. I hope to see more books by this Author.

Great read