Callie Carpenter

Jaime divorces her unfaithful husband and winds up with a ramshackle house badly in need of repair in the settlement. Having experience in home design and construction with a business shared with her ex, she begins the demo work herself on her newly acquired home. Knocking down a wall, she gets more than she expected when a corpse is discovered in the wall. Now the real fun begins. The police are called in, the body is removed, and Jaime is locked out of her house - now a crime scene - and is dismayed at the delay in getting work done. She decides to look into matters herself. This mystery is the first in the series, and is quite good. Interesting characters and an intriguing mystery kept me involved in the story.… (more)

Book Review: Death By Demo. Home Renovation Mystery #1
Stars: 4 X 5
Author: Callie Carpenter
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books @crookedlanebooks
Thank you @netgalley for this ARC

Set in a small town in North Carolina where Jamie and her husband have a successful contracting business. They work in renovations. All was going well until Jamie found her husband cheating on her. From the divorce Jamie get an old house that she decides to renovate herself. This is a perfect way to start her own business. All is going well until Jamie decides to knock down a wall and she finds a body. Jamie ends up becoming an amateur sleuth along with her best friend Lara. Jamie wants this mystery solved fast so she can get back to renovations. Unfortunately, when Jamie learns the identity of the deceased she realizes it is someone she knew from the past as did her friends and ex husband. Needless to say they all end up being person’s of interest to the police. Not only does she use Lara to help her but she ends up having Mike her next door neighbor get in on the shenanigans too. Lucky for Jamie she knows Mike as he owns the local hardware store and is very easy on the eyes.

The ending of the who dunit mystery was a surprise for me and I did not see this ending at all. I also liked that towards the end of the story Mike and Jamie have the beginning's of a budding romance. This was a great cozy mystery and I am looking forward to reading more in those series. Plus, there is a cat and I love cats.

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Death By Demo is the first book in the A Home Renovation Mystery series by Callie Carpenter.

Jaime Moore is recently divorced after having caught her husband having an affair with their construction company’s receptionist. They spent fifteen years building their construction/ interior design business. After signing a prenup agreement, all Jaime has to show for the fifteen years is a rundown Queen Anne house and her original small cash contribution for the fifteen years. She loves the old home, even with all the work needed to renovate it. She has been sleeping on her BFF, Lara, sofa since her marriage fell apart.

Jaime has decided it is time to start the project with Spring arriving in Green River, North Carolina. With her trusty sledgehammer, Jaime and Lara head to the house to begin work. Their first project is in the kitchen, where Jaime has decided that if a wall is removed, there will be more usable space. After a couple of swings with the sledgehammer, the wall crumbled to the floor. After the dust settled and the debris removed, they were shocked to find that someone had placed the body of a female and then built the wall to hide her. The police arrive, and it doesn't appear that the female died of natural causes, and the police will declare the house a crime scene, stopping any more work from being done. It will soon be learned that the body is that of Cilla, a friend from high school. Since Jaime and Lara knew the deceased, they felt compelled to see if they could learn who they might be.
They will find several suspects, including Jaime’s ex-husband, her rumpled attorney, and her neighbor.

This book is a well-written and plotted story in this new series. The characters are well-written and plotted with interesting characters.… (more)

Jaime thought she and Henry had the perfect marriage until she caught him making love to another woman. The divorce left her with only a derelict mansion in need of many repairs because Henry's father had had her sign an ironclad prenup when the two married. After going into a depression and crashing on her best friend's couch, Jaime is starting to come around.

Sure, it would be best to sell the house for whatever she could get and start over, but Jaime helped her former husband start a home renovation business and she is eager to bring this wreck back to life. Only things start to go wrong immediately when she finds a body behind a hastily built wall that she is demoing.

The police declare the house a crime scene and Jaime's plans for her new future are in jeopardy if she can't determine who murdered the women behind the wall and get back to work on her renovation. She has a number of suspects including the oh-so-helpful and hot next-door neighbor, her lawyer, and her ex-husband. The suspect pool enlarges when the identity of the victim becomes known. Jaime had known and liked Cilla ever since she helped her out once while the two were in high school. Now, besides wanting to clear up the crime so that she can get back to work, she wants to find justice for the woman who was once her friend.

I enjoyed this mystery. I liked watching Jaime reclaim her life after her ex did the best he could to make her feel useless and stupid. I liked the way she was determined to rebuilt both her life and the business she loves.… (more)