Deadly Reception by Karen Randau-Book Review-Great Escapes Tour

Deadly Reception (Tawnee Mountain Mysteries)

Suspense Thriller Mystery
Self Published (April 16, 2018)
Paperback: 138 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1984380807
Digital ASIN: B079DGBW37

Deadly Reception is a part of the Tawnee Mountain Mysteries series, a collection of seven brand new mysteries, from seven award-winning and bestselling authors, taking place at the same final destination, the Tawnee Mountain Resort.

Deadly Reception features characters from Karen Randau’s Rim Country Mysteries series.

Each book in this multi-author series is a standalone novella, and the series can be read in any order.
The Tawnee Mountain Mysteries series includes:

Leona’s Last Resort by Karen M. Bryson
Dark Side of the Mountain by R.J. Rosatte
Deadly Reception by Karen Randau
Black Diamond Graves by Wendy Fallon
Deadly Misfire by Laurie Fagen
Cassidy’s Deadly Exit by Marla J. Hayes
The Quinnipiac Disappearance by Lee Tidball

About-Deadly Reception 

A severed head. A philandering husband. A skeleton in the basement. This was not the perfect wedding Rita Avery planned for her daughter Zoe!

Rita Avery and her detective husband Cliff arrive at New Jersey’s Tawnee Mountain Resort prepared to greet Zoe’s wedding guests in just three hours. Who would have expected to find a man’s torso in their closet?

Things explode into high gear when the victim’s head shows up at the golf equipment shack. A good look at his social media makes Rita wonder if a wife murdered her husband as revenge for infidelity. Or did a secret admirer decide to liberate the wife from her scoundrel husband?
Worse, is Zoe in life-threatening danger . . . again?
And will Rita and Cliff escape the trap in which the murderer snares them?

Murder and a passel of twists that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Zoe’s wedding is the most exciting you’ll attend!

Guest post

Hi, there. I’m Rita Avery. I woke up one day in the imagination of Karen Randau, author of the Rim Country Mystery series of novels and one of seven authors in the Tawnee Mountain Mystery series of novellas. I’m the narrator of all of her books, including Deadly Reception, her novella in the Tawnee series.

Many of my experiences are things that have shaped Karen. I’ve heard her say my character traits come not only from Karen herself, but also from people she admires and others who make her cringe.

I don’t know how she comes up with the things she’s put me through. I’ve been trapped in a burning house, nearly drowned, blasted into a tree, and cooped up with a skeleton in a crypt, among other things.

These experiences have changed me.

In Karen’s debut novel, Deadly Deceit, I was a shallow, middle-aged widow who never had a job and led a privileged life. She has said a real-life movie theater shooting inspired that book because she wanted to tell what the survivors might have endured. She gave me a serious case of PTSD, which shows up in each of the following novels but is beginning to fade. She also helped me learn to defend and stand up for myself and to trust my instincts. There’s so much more to life than designer clothes and what my neighbors think of me. I now care more about my family and how I can make a positive difference in people’s lives.

I got to find love again in Karen’s second book, Deadly Inheritance. I married the hunk-of-a-police-detective who helped me unravel all the lies my first husband had told me about our lives. Cliff and I went to Scotland to help him find his roots, but we never expected what hit us there, starting with a hotel clerk dying in front of us as we checked in. These experiences led me to want to find my long lost mother, a 1960s vegetarian hippie who retreated to a nudist artist commune when my father died.

Willow – Mom as she suddenly wants to be called – showed up in Karen’s third book, Deadly Choices. She now eats meat, says she can see into the soul of a man through his pupils, and denies that the pink smiley face on the chain that bound me to a boulder could possibly be the one my daughter decorated with fingernail polish when she was ten. We’ve untangled that mess!

In Deadly Reception, my whole family gets to go to a posh New Jersey golf and ski resort for my daughter Zoe’s wedding. It’s a beautiful place. Unfortunately, someone left a torso in Cliff’s and my closet. I thought my experiences could help his lovely young widow, an orphan, get through the first few hours of her ordeal. I never expected my compassion to get me embroiled in infidelity, mental illness, and maybe the New Jersey mob!

If you get the chance, I’d love to get to know you through the books Karen and I have written together.

About the Author

Karen Randau recently retired from an international humanitarian aid organization where she worked in marketing communications for nearly three decades.

Her Rim Country Mysteries series currently has three novels: DEADLY DECEIT, about a woman whose husband was one of fourteen people killed in a movie theater shooting; DEADLY INHERITANCE, about the same woman who has remarried and gets locked in a Viking burial cave with a lit stick of dynamite while honeymooning in Scotland; and DEADLY CHOICES, about the same woman finding the mother she hasn’t seen in twenty-five years, only to discover a devastating secret. Her fourth book, DEADLY RECEPTION, is part of the multi-author Tawnee Mountain Mystery series of novellas and features the same character unraveling the mystery of why there was a torso in her closet when she check into a posh New Jersey resort.

Karen enjoys spending time with her grown children, playing with her dog, and hiking with her husband.

Website: http://www.karenrandau.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/karenrandauauthor

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=karen+randau

And I thought

A super fast paced race to find out just who was leaving body 
parts laying around an elegant wedding/hotel venue!
This was a super fast read.  I was turning the pages and loving every hair raising moment. 
From the beginning our main character Rita and her detective husband Cliff find blood almost everywhere they turn.   It isn't gruesome or creepy at all.  
The killer was leaving a tidy little trail that ended up giving our 
detectives all the evidence they needed to track him/her(?) down.
Karen Randeau can write a gruesome plot without making it gruesome!  
Deadly Reception is part of a series written by 7 different authors.   Each is a novella and written as a stand alone.
Rita is a great leading character that is great at searching the internet she pulls together pieces from the puzzle and finds out 
who the suspects are and crosses them off the list with ease. 

The current murder ends up being related to a cold case from Cliff's past hence the trail and the toying with their minds.

I enjoyed the ending of the book.  Well I enjoyed the whole book 
but I especially  liked the way Rita ended up using her brain power and some fancy moves she had been taught by her late husband.  

The wedding did go off without a hitch.  The mystery was solved and the bad guy was revealed. 

There are no bedroom scenes.  Much to Rita and Cliff's chagrin as they were expecting a romantic weekend.  
There is no language.  
Only good ole mystery and suspense.
I loved Deadly Reception I think the other titles in this series would be fun to read.  
I received a complimentary copy. 
This review will appear on retail sites and Good Reads. 

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