A Very Beechwood Christmas (Garrett)

A Very Beechwood Christmas:
Four Festive Magic Mini Mysteries from Beechwood Harbor by Danielle Garrett (2019)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

I downloaded this around Christmastime and started it in 2020, but I had to put it aside becasuse I had library books to finish. Of all things, I found it because I was searching for books with gnomes. I was thinking of writing something, and I wanted to see how other people handled them.

Well, there are gnomes here, but they aren't really the focus of the book.

Beechwood Harbor, and Beechwood Manor, are home to witches, "shifters", ghosts, and other supernatural individuals, as well as regular people who don't know that they are there. It's a haven, of sorts (not to be confused with Haven from the show, but that could be a comparison). There is a series of more than a dozen of these mysteries. I wouldn't be adverse to revisiting some of them. The downside is that I didn't always feel like I knew the characters, like maybe there was stuff I should've know. Like when you tune into a random new TV show midseason.

For once, i downloaded something free that wasn't painful to read. I liked the writing style, even if some things didn't afree with what an editor or two has told me.

The main character is Holly Boldt, although I forgot that early on, becuase her name is rarely mentioned in the first story. Keep in mind, I primarily read at bedtime, so it's a little bit from night to night, usually. The stories are connected, but they get told from different points of view. After two parts of Holly, it switches to Nick, a private detective. After that, there's the tale of a ghost cat. And someone else, a ghost whisperer (I'll edit this later). And back to Holly for what's basically an epilogue.

The story starts with learning that Santa is real, and that he's coming to Beechwood Harbor this year to soak up Christmas magic to power the sleigh and operations for the holiday trip and for the coming year. It's an annual tour of different havens around the globe. Folks in the supernatural community are excited and rolling out the welcome wagon.To regular folk, he's just another mall Santa with some rented reindeer.

Unfortunately, some rabid gnomes get loose and start messing up the town. The gnomes, it turns out, were having a bad reaction to some sweets. This leads into the next story where it seems that someone is trying to ruin Christmas, or at least prevent Santa from gathering the needed magic. This is foiled, but were our heroes too late?

And so it goes from one narrator to the next, and back to Holly. The first four would be the mysteries. The fifth and sixth are just for fun to close out the story. You can't lead all the way up to Christmas Eve with Santa and then just drop it. You need to know what happens next? How was the ride? And what will Christmas morning bring?

It was a fun book for the holiday. If I were the type to reread books, I might do that in December.