Review: A Real Grinch!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 10, 2012
Gabby St. Claire is on the tail of a real-life-Christmas-Grinch! Someone is intent on sabotaging all signs of Christmas in her town, and that doesn't sit well with Gabby or her new-found friends at church. When random body parts start showing up at the scenes of holiday vandalism, the urgency to find the grinch increases."It Came Upon a Midnight Crime" is a novella installment to the Squeaky Clean series, meant to fall between the already published second and third installments.  There's plenty of appearances from the regular characters in the series, especially from Pastor Shaggy and Riley.  I honestly didn't care at all for this novella until I finished reading it, because it starts off with Gabby being incredibly hostile towards Riley without any real explanation.  Even though I had read the entire series, and knew why, it was still an awkward start to the story -- and got even more odd when her hostility suddenly vanishes as quickly as it appeared.  Gabby's yo-yo'ing feelings towards Riley were just too extreme for a novella to handle, especially if you haven't read the prior books.However, the plot as a whole was amazing -- Christy Barritt did a great job at dropping hints, inconspicuously and blatantly.  I had a little bit of a feeling as to who the grinch was from the very beginning, but I still felt surprised at the end when my gut feeling was confirmed.Definitely a great read if you're reading through the series in order, but not so much as a stand-alone novella because of the unexplained backgrounds of the characters (in my personal opinion.)