Book Review & Guest Post (and a Giveaway!): Six Feet Under by Tonya Kappes

Posted March 19, 2018 by meezcarrie in contemporary, cozy mystery, giveaway, Kentucky, mystery/suspense, Tonya Kappes / 10 Comments

Too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the broth. And let me tell you, this broth is in trouble. Get ready for a Southern showdown.

The residents of Cottonwood, Kentucky are sent into a tizzy when the Culinary Channel comes to town to film an episode of Southern Home Cookin’ with celebrity chef Frank Von Lee.

Especially Sheriff Kenni Lowry.

Her mama’s award-winning chicken pot pie is what brought Frank to town, and they don’t make hair in the South bigger than her mama’s ego after the news.

When Frank Von Lee is found dead from food poisoning and the most likely culprit is Mama’s chicken pot pie, Kenni’s poppa, the former sheriff, comes back from the Great Beyond to assist in the investigation.

But nothing’s prepared Kenni for such a personal tie to a case, and she finds herself pushing the limits of the laws she’s sworn to protect.

This book’s so delicious it’ll make your mouth water and leave you hankerin’ for more.

SERIES: Kenni Lowry #4
GENRE: Cozy Mystery
PUBLISHER: Henery Press
RELEASE DATE: March 13, 2018
PAGES: 268

Other Books In This Series

Tonya Kappes is a master at small-town Kentucky mystery, and her heroine Kenni Lowry is a delightful mix of strength and hot mess. While Six Feet Under can be read as a standalone, I’ve so enjoyed watching Kenni from the beginning until now. Especially her relationship with swoony deputy Finn, which has some particularly swoonilicious developments in this installment of the series.

I love the interplay between Kenni and her ghost sidekick, her beloved grandfather. As Poppa pops in and out, Kenni is getting caught more often talking to ‘herself’, and I think in book #5, Dead as a Doornail, some of her secrets are going to be forced out in the open. She’s at least going to have to let Finn in on the whole thing, since he’s the closest to her these days. And I don’t have a good enough read on Finn yet to know how that’s going to play out. She may have to spill the beans to her mama too, and that – i predict – will not go well.

Speaking of her mama, she is a bundle of ‘hot mess’. Viv is going all out for the Culinary Channel’s visit, and bless her heart she ends up on the wrong side of the law more than once. From the questionable Botox source to the pink handicap tag (that she doesn’t need anyway) to the dead chef who gave her a bad review, Viv keeps Kenni more than busy in this book. And her melodramatics make for hilarious reading.

Bottom Line: Six Feet Under is another excellent cozy mystery from Tonya Kappes. She’s nailed the cadence and quirkiness of a small Kentucky town, and both her main and recurring characters are a hoot. I love the character growth we’ve seen so far in Kenni, and I’m waiting eagerly for the next book to see how some of these thing will continue to play out. While I had pretty well figured out whodunit from the beginning, it’s so delightfully plotted (including the subthreads) that this didn’t bother me at all. I just enjoyed the journey as Kenni (and her Poppa) figured it out too. A sweet dose of romance and plenty of chuckles await you as well!

(I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book which I received from the publisher. All views expressed are only my honest opinion.)

My Rating: 4.5 stars / Love it!

Reviewer’s Note: Readers may want to be aware that there is some mild cursing scattered throughout the novel.

For years, USA Today bestselling author Tonya Kappes has been publishing numerous mystery and romance titles with unprecedented success. She is famous not only for her hilarious plot lines and quirky characters but her tremendous marketing efforts that have earned her thousands of followers and a devoted street team of fans.

Facebook | Kappes Krew | Twitter | Pinterest | Goodreads

Death By Edits

I admit that when I started writing I had no idea what I was doing. I had an idea. I wanted ONE reader to escape their life by my one story. That was it. It wasn’t until I had written that book did I know what it really was like to be a writer.

Some people say that writing the novel is the hardest part for them. Ernst Hemingway said, “There is nothing to writing. All you have to do sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.” I agree that writing a novel is far from easy. It takes discipline to sit down every day and knock out five thousand words. Believe it or not, that is the easy part for me.

I immerse myself into a book as I’m writing it. I love those characters. I love their homes. I love the small town. I love everything about it. I live in their world for many months as I’m writing their story.

Then comes the part that I downright loathe! I mean it. I can’t stand editing. To make it less painful, after I write the first one-hundred pages of a novel; which is what I call the bones, I go back and add meat to those bones. I will add more descriptions, more dialogue tags, and more of the funny stuff. Then I will do this for the next one-hundred pages with a Diet Coke by side.

That’s not the end of the editing process. This is just the beginning. Once I go back and add the meat on the bones, I print it all out and do it all over again. I try to make the manuscript fat with words and with description all while making sure the timelines in the plot fit and work. After doing this a few times, then and only then do I send it off to the editor. But by this time another character from another series has already taken root in my head and started their story.

A few months later I get an email from the editor that their edits have been added and I have to take a look at them. I’ve already forgotten the plot and what everyone in the town looks like because I have moved on. I grab a cup of coffee and hunker down.

This is very difficult for me. I’m not the type of writer who can write a couple books at the same time. I can’t. I’m not wired that way. It’s awful. Plumb awful.

Since I have to get the edits back to my editor, I have to stop writing the current work in progress, go back and reread the novel that needs edits and start all over. By this time, I’m so sick of the novel that I just want to move on.

Then I send it back to my editor for a couple more rounds of edits. I don’t hear from the editor for a few months. Then out of nowhere, I get a copy of the ARC of that novel that I’d been so tired of. My eyes swell. My heart dips. I rub the cover. I crack the spine and start to fall in love all over again with those characters and that small town. And it’s just in time for them to move right back in my head for the next novel in the series.