Halloween at Raspberry Ridge
By K.L. Kaane (Indie author, 2026)
Pages (print): 373
Genre: Fiction – Cozy mystery.
Via: Product purchase
A dance garden. A spring house. An apple shed. Cameras. Blue fabric. False dust. And “carefully scheduled fear.”
The Basics:
Autumn has arrived at Raspberry Ridge, bringing crimson leaves, glowing pumpkins, and a cozy Halloween mystery that gives the struggling historic bed-and-breakfast the perfect reason to stay open year-round.
Liz Jensen is determined to make the celebration unforgettable. With Ethan beside her, family filling the inn, and Mrs. Barlow enthusiastically reinventing herself as a fortune-teller, Raspberry Ridge feels warm and more hopeful than ever.
Instead, the old house begins to stir.
Violin music drifts through empty rooms. Footsteps cross the floor above when no one is upstairs. A hidden chest reveals an old blue dress, dance shoes, photographs, and a knife stained with something that looks disturbingly like blood. Then the threats against Cyndi and her baby daughter become more dangerous, and Liz begins to wonder whether someone is using the inn’s tragic history to frighten them away—or whether Raspberry Ridge has been keeping secrets of its own.
As Halloween night approaches, Liz and the people she loves must separate carefully planned tricks from the things no one can explain. Because someone is watching the inn, someone wants control of Raspberry Ridge, and beneath the laughter, costumes, and candlelight, something dark is moving closer.
+++
Our Take
Seventy years ago Mandy Whitcomb, age 19, went missing at Bear Lake after an autumn social at Raspberry Ridge. (Kimber: That’s 1956, for you math whizzes.) Mandy was last seen walking toward Bear Lake. (That’s a real place in Utah/Idaho, by the way. We checked. We’re just funny that way.) What happened to Mandy and why is the core question in this cozy mystery set in the delightful historic B&B, Raspberry Ridge.
Rich
Halloween at Raspberry Ridge is a richly atmospheric read that offers patient readers a delicious run-up recipe to the season of sweaters, pumpkins, hot apple cider, autumn leaves, and fall festivals. Ingredients include a generous base of small-town charm, a dash of sweet romance, and a heavy pour of whimsical wit topped with a sprinkle of mystery. Readers are soon immersed in a place where old benches beckon beneath cottonwoods. Where visitors arrive bearing peach turnovers. Where the grass still holds “a touch of summer’s green” and the air smells “of cooling earth, lake water, and the faint sweetness of apples.”
Kimber: When do we start packing?
There’s also a box in the Raspberry Ridge parlor. Old photos. A locket. A newspaper clipping hidden behind a lake print. Cinder the Rottweiler pup. Margaret, mama dog extraordinaire, and her puppies. A cat named Luna. And a lake that becomes a character itself, “Blue and bright beneath the afternoon sun.”
Sunlit & Smart
Halloween at Raspberry Ridge is like a sunlit porch during a summer storm: It wraps you in the warmth of family and the small-town charm of a lakefront B&B while shadows in the corner keep you guessing and the light breeze of local wit clears the air. Kimber: It’s also a place where the animals are a whole lot smarter than the hoomans. Kinda like… Oh, never mind.
This story has much to recommend it. And we enjoyed it overall. But we had some bones to pick with it, too. (Kimber: Bones? Did someone say “bones”?)
First, we loved the Prologue featuring Mandy at a dock hugging Bear Lake. It offers enough mystery to hook you and reel you in to chapter one. We also loved how responsible dog ownership and adoption policies are woven into the story. We loved the light narrative touch. The Somewhere In Time-ish vibe. The pacing, secondary storylines, overuse of snark and one-line paragraphs, and thin characters? Not so much.
The dried flowers… the mysterious note, the violin playing from the trees, and now enough antique clothing to dress every disappointed woman in northern Utah. Whoever is doing this has a strong visual sense and absolutely no interest in subtlety.
Bacon Break?
For example, the plot sometimes feels like a river with too many tributaries — the main current is too often diluted by detours. Like the secondary storyline about Cyndi and the fight with her late husband’s parents over custody of her baby daughter, Lily. Why is that even in the book? How does it relate to Mandy’s disappearance? Did we miss that? And what’s up with Walter Bench? Marrietta? Ericka? Why does Ethan propose to Liz in chapter one?! New readers don’t even know who the guy is, and he’s proposing matrimony on page 12?Really?
The author seems to assume that Book 2 readers have read Book 1. That’s a big assumption. It results in some plot holes and confusion. Both could be easily ironed out with a little backstory. More on that in a min. So kindly keep your hair on, Cupcake. (Kimber: Yea, verily. It sometimes feels like the plot took a bacon break in the middle of a squirrel chase.)
We found the snarky banter between siblings Oliva and Tanner, Liz’s adult-ish kids, funny-ish at first. But they get tiresome pretty quick. Think mosquito that knows exactly where your ear is. We get it that Tanner is a college-aged wiseacre, okay? We got it the first 967 times he opens his mouth. No need to beat us over the head with it. Same with Mrs. Barlow. So while the wit is winsome and the dialogue is snappy, the sheer density of smart-alecky retorts or responses teeters on the rim edge of exhausting and risks overshadowing the plot and slowing the pace.
Puppies are not party favors.
Overload
Character overload shows up in early chapters, where numerous, seemingly ungrounded characters are introduced and proceed to scurry through chapters like a herd of cats. Since Raspberry Ridge is Book Two in the Bear Lake series, these characters and their backstories may have been rounded out in prior books. But reducing the cast of characters here would give the plot more room to breathe.
“They used the real story to make everything else believable.”
Another curious note regarding characters: There’s no main character here. Not really. No single protagonist/sleuth offers readers a place to “hang their hats.” Based on the book blurb, you’d think that role would go to Raspberry Ridge owner Liz Jensen. But sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued Mrs. Barlow, age 82, has more “screen time” than Liz does.
Additionally, the when, where, why and how Liz wound up running the inn is never explained, at least not in this book. In fact, there’s a lot that’s not really explained. And while the plot is densely populated by a hefty cast of characters, we don’t really get to know any of them particularly well. Like, who are these people? How and why did they end up at Raspberry Ridge? Where did they come from? When? What’s their backstory? (Kimber: At times we felt like we were walking into a movie halfway through the screening.)
He promised he’d come.
Yes, friends. Backstory isn’t filler. It’s the soil from which the plot grows. Characters without histories drift like shadows. Their choices seem arbitrary, their emotions unanchored. So, while the structure may be sound, it lacks the warmth, weight and pulse that make it truly live and breathe. Example: The story leaves readers guessing about how two key characters “escaped” or vanished, made lives somewhere else, and “returned years later,” years apart. How? Why? So some characters’ inner engines run on fumes; a few more fuel lines would make the journey more compelling.
“But dogs have always shown questionable judgment where humans are concerned.”
Just as there’s no single main character or protagonist, there’s also no single villain/antagonist behind shenanigans at the inn. Cyndi’s smug, supercilious mom-in-law is about as close as it gets. But how is she related to the core question? Answer: She’s not. Cuz the core compelling question in Raspberry Ridge isn’t whodunit?, but “What really happened here?” vis-a-vis Mandy. Hence, the narrative focuses on a disappearance driven by misunderstandings and bad timing. Sort of. And how many times does Deputy Holloway have to tell everyone not to go outside alone?
Heroism and lunch can coexist.
We also had a few bones to pick with the artwork. On the back cover, the author’s head shot is blurry. Ditto the cover art. Whether or not this is intentional is unclear. (Pun intended.)
Mrs. Barlow… was not predicting the future so much as noticing what people wished she had not noticed and telling them truths their friends had become too polite to mention.
As noted above, the book’s dry wit, rapid-fire one-liners, and snappy rejoinders are highly entertaining initially. But the constant stream of deadpan humor threatens to overshadow the narrative arc in places, risking reader fatigue over the course of the novel. And while the narrative frequently snaps and crackles with energy, the core storyline gets a bit crowded by all the moving parts. Some structural pruning will make the main storyline pop.
Speaking of pruning – sort of – the repeated overuse of one-sentence paragraphs drove us nuts. It’s like salsa with too many Habaneros: Small, bold, and capable of burning your eyes out if you use too many at once.
This book uses too many at once.
Uses too many at once.
Uses too many at once.
Uses too… See what we mean?
Also, when the reason for the “haunting” of Raspberry Ridge is revealed, we were like, “Huh?” Kimber: Wouldn’t an inn with a reputation for being “haunted” bring customers in rather than drive them away, especially around Halloween?
Finally, we enjoyed the overall charm and warmth of Halloween at Raspberry Ridge. It shines bright with an imaginative concept and a plot shrouded in secrets and shadow. Rife with perspicacity and promise, it’s a solid effort from an author who has compelling stories to tell as her style matures.
Kimber: Just what exactly is a “dance garden,” anyway? Does it include bacon?
