Review: VERY clever story!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 8, 2013
I happened to LOVE this short story! I found it as entertaining as Emily Castle, our protagonist did! Things never ceased to entertain her in this short story, as well as myself. Helen Smith did a great job engaging us with Emily Castle in this short story. This is Book One of Two in this series, and I think the best of the two.Emily is invited to a new neighbors party, a Bonfire, in honor of Bonfire night (Halloween), also in honor of Diwali, a Hindu festival of light involving a lot of Fireworks, and Guy Fawkes night, a British holiday and another reason for the Fireworks. (The book has much more detail about these holidays, which take place in England and seem to be all rolled into one big one.)She gets to the party, meets her new, overtly extravagant neighbors, and essentially finds out these are very quirky people who more or less just moved into this house, and as they called it, moved in to decorate and take care of this big, neglected empty home, decorating it to celebrate it with art and more before they move on home back to Hungary. It did indeed been renovated for the better by these people, overly so, but good as it gave this distressed house some life back to it. (Essentially, these people are house squatters!)They had a huge party in honor of all the previous celebrations I just mentioned, dressed up as all types of different, crazy, zany  characters. One of them was acting as a DJ, and they even had a show planned as well. This show involved sisters doing a knife show,  kind of like in a circus.As this performance takes place, a sisters ends up with a knife landing in the center of her chest/a fake knife. It killed her, or at least Emily thinks it might have, but it's all part of the act, right? This turns into a mystery as Emily thinks a murder has taken place. She knows what she saw, but is talked out of it. She discusses this with a friend, Dr. Muriel, and together, this starts them on an investigation to find a 'supposed' murdered sister.Helen Smith's writing is SO entertaining in this story, a mystery, and yet a light-hearted comedy at times, too! All of her books are very entertaining, humorous, and hold your attention till the very end!I really enjoy reading her writing! She is British, so we stumble upon some words at times that are not used here quite as much, so I've found myself looking them up online at times, out of curiosity because I 'have' to know what they mean! Other times, the British just have words for things that we don't, which makes her writing enjoyable again, and there I go again, back on the internet trying to find out what a 'whatever' is!Truly, this was a very entertaining book that I think anyone could sit down for a few hours and enjoy immensely. Well worth taking the time to read this one! I received this book for FREE from the author in exchange to read and write a review about it. It is NOT required for this review to be either positive or negative, but of my own honest opinion. "Free" means I was provided with ZERO MONIES to read this book nor to write this review, but to enjoy the pure pleasure of reading it. I am disclosing this information in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255, [...]Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.