#67 The Julius House: An Aurora Teagarden Mystery by Charlaine Harris

My Rating: 7 out of 10 stars

Aurora "Roe" Teagarden has received a most unusual but welcome wedding present from her fiancé, Martin Bartell. He has given her "the Julius House", a local house that's been shrouded in mystery for the last 6 years since it's previous occupants went missing. Roe has always been drawn to the house, as well as the circumstances surrounding the unexpected and sudden disappearance of its previous inhabitants. But when she starts sleuthing, can she handle the things she discovers?

It took me a little while to reacquaint myself with a few of the characters in this series. I didn't really recall Martin all that well, though I did remember her previous two boyfriends, Arthur the cop and Aubrey the minister. So either Martin came into the picture late in book 3, and I haven't yet read enough about him, or else he simply didn't make much of an impression on me. Nevertheless, that was the only character I didn't remember. And I quickly warmed to the familiarity of Roe and her family and friends from the small town of Lawrenceton, GA.

This book and the next, Dead Over Heels were fairly difficult to find so I purchased them from eBay for a fair price and plan to give them to NeedSun. I'd actually planned to do that after I bought them last year, but she insisted I read the series first since I had been acquiring the majority of the early books for her. And I'm certainly glad I did. These are cute little cozies, not as dark as the Shakespeare series, but Charlaine's terrific writing style comes through just as easily in these earlier books, making them a joy to read. :-)

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