Good Tidings by Terri Reid
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Paranormal, Mystery
Content: Clean



Black Friday – the official opening of the holiday shopping season – and Patrice Marcum is stuck in the middle of her local superstore with a crying infant, a near-hysterical desire to just abandon the diapers and milk she desperately needs, and the snowstorm of the century dumping half a foot of snow on the parking lot outside. She needs a miracle.

In Good Tidings, Mary is visited by the ghost of a 6 year old boy who wants her to help him find his kidnapped baby brother. Just like the last book, there is the main mystery, and we get another side mystery. To be honest, neither of these are really mysteries. The bad guys are pretty much just laid out for us, and we are left figuring out the why behind it. There is some suspense while this goes on, but anyone going into this series thinking they are going to read a challenging mystery with lots of twists and turns, will be sorely disappointed. The real mystery so far, of both of these books, is the one surrounding Bradley's missing wife. We still don't know exactly what happened to her.

Mostly I did not like this book as much as I liked the first one. This one lacked some of the charm the other book had and wasn't as funny. Mainly because they leave the small town and spend most the book in Chicago. There is also a loose end left in this book that seemed kind of pointless to the plot, but maybe that will be continued at a future point in the series.

I still have the same complaints about this book that I had about the last one about Mary not being believable enough as an ex-cop, and doing things that don't seem consistent with the way an ex-cop would think or act. Why does she even have a gun? I have no idea, she never uses it. And her overprotective brothers really got on my nerves in this one. I do like that Bradley can see and hear the ghosts when he is touching Mary, and the added discovery that he seems to neutralize them when he is near her, made it more interesting, but it kind of felt like the author added that for convenience to the story. It would be interesting to explore the relationship Mary and Bradley have concerning the ghosts and why they affect each other the way they do around them.

I can see how this series could get old fast if the author doesn't step up the mystery aspect of it, or add some new element to it. It could end up being very repetitive. I'll stick it out for at least one more book though, or until we find out what happened to Bradley's wife.