Karen Musser Nortman

What a fun young adult listen! It held the usual of a teenager’s life in modern times in a small town, but mixed with time travel it was both entertaining and educational. We learn just how society and culture condition how we respond to events.

Dinah is the typical fourteen-year-old—curious and a bit snappy when things don’t go her way and very sarcastic when she’s ticked off. She isn’t happy about her mom and dad’s separation. Nor is she happy about how much time her mom spends show more with her career.

Lynne, Dinah’s mom, feels the gap between her daughter and herself. She knows part of it is because of the separation from Dinah’s dad, but it’s also what happens to teenagers as they experience the pangs of growing up, coming to terms with who they are.

When her mom buys a trailer from one of the neighbors and starts stripping away the many coats of paint, changes of flooring, etc., she gets involved in the transformation. Lynne decides the trailer may bring her daughter and her closer by taking some weekends for camping. And if not, it would make a great work office. But reader, this is not just a trailer, but one with secrets. Would you be willing to sleep in a trailer and wake up somewhere else not knowing if you could return home again? Lynne and Dinah had very adventurous souls and it was a pleasure to join them as they discovered that which came before them!

Usually my time travel book reads go back to the highlands or medieval times. This one is recent history, which makes it enticingly readable. We come to understand how events shaped people’s lives during the late 1930’s through 1960’s. The author had to have done some thorough research to get the ever changing dialog slang and clothing correct during these periods.

Narrator Valerie Gilbert does what she does best. Her voice has a smooth charm about it and she’s able to handle different accents fluidly. She’s outstanding with sarcasm and bored dialogue. For this listen, she’s perfect! I loved how absolutely authentic Dinah’s sarcasm and annoyance with life shone through Ms. Gilbert’s voice.

I liked this book so much, I want to read the second in the series show less

Frannie and Larry Shoemaker, and their dog, Cuba, are once again in an RV campground--but not as guests this time. They're here to act as the hosts at a campground only an hour from their home, for the month of May. It's part of their longer-term plan to get an assignment at a campground someplace warmer than Iowa for the winter months. What could possibly go wrong?

Oh, right, it's the Shoemakers, with Larry's sister Jayne-Ann and her husband Mickey coming to join them. Something will happen, show more and they'll be involved in finding the first signs of trouble. And Frannie will find clues whether she wants to or not. She is patient, she is kind, she is smart, and people talk to her. And now, for this month, they're the campground hosts.

This story is set during the height of the pandemic, and there are rules they've never had to follow before that they now have to be the first line of enforcement for. Wearing masks and encouraging others to do so. Telling people the bad news that group activities that would normally occur are canceled. The shower house is closed. And no socializing between groups. The park rangers are sending out notices to everyone that has reservations, and some are canceling as they get the word. Others are coming anyway, but if they don't comply when they arrive, it will be on Frannie and Larry to explain the rules again. If anyone doesn't comply after explanation and polite requests, they can call the rangers, who will do real enforcement.

Despite this, they're enjoying themselves, especially after Mickey and Jayne-Ann arrive. As a family group that are in and out of each other's homes all the time, they can also socialize at the campground--but they do limit this in order to not set a bad example.

As campers arrive, they have both good and bad encounters, and frankly strange ones, including Mr. Dwayne Dunning. Dunning rented a tent site for his first try ever at camping, and didn't realize that he needed to bring his own tent. Frannie explains that no, he needs to have his own. Being familiar with the area, she's able to tell him where he can buy one. He leaves his sleeping bag at his site, and it's stolen while he's off buying his tent.

There's a family with three lovely kids, and parents who are friendly, and happy to accommodate the change in rules despite the disappointing loss of some activities for the kids. There's a couple who are just not friendly at all, which Larry notes could be an advantage, compared to people who are too friendly, with the new rules. Also others who fall in the normal range of friendliness and willingness to go along with the new rules.

Then one of the friendly, reasonable ones sees someone sleeping on one of the benches along a hiking trail, one morning. He's gone by the time the ranger gets there (a relief to Frannie, for obvious reasons), but it certainly sounds like he's the one who stole Dunning's sleeping bag.

Covid further enlivens the campground, not by illness among the campers, but by the need of various campers to do work online or the children to do schoolwork online, in a place where most carriers have only iffy coverage. The number of children needing school access increases by two when the Shoemakers' son calls to say his wife is now hospitalized with covid, and can they take the kids, please? Juggling online work, keeping up with his wife's condition and needs while not being allowed to visit her, and being both a parent and a schoolteacher to his kids is becoming too much. Of course they agree to take the two kids, and meet halfway to pick them up the next morning.

Then Jayne-Ann finds a woman's shoe on one of the trails--a bloody shoe. And no one has seen the woman of the unfriendly couple. But a serious storm is moving in, and the immediate problem is to figure out where to get adequate shelter for the campers, given that the usual emergency shelter--the shower building--is closed by state order, due to the pandemic. There are unoccupied cabins, in need of renovation and having electricity but no water. Better shelter, at least, than tents or RVs, and just enough of them to give every group their own cabin for the storm. Point to Frannie as a good campground host, because the rangers didn't think of this.

They find the missing woman, badly beaten but alive, in the cabin the Shoemakers have been assigned. Her husband is missing. Sarah-Beth and Joe, Frannie's grandchildren, see a man dressed all in black, walking past on one of the trails while they were relegated to the truck after the discovery of the missing woman.

This is when it stops being a mostly-fun campground experience for the Shoemaker clan, and becomes tense and scary as they have a relatively legitimate inside track on the hunt for a dangerous man, and one person too many knows it. Other campers chime in with useful information, and Frannie and Sarah-Beth each have truly scary experiences.

There are close calls and new revelations.

These are fun books, with wonderful ongoing characters. I really enjoy them. Frannie in particular is just great, and the family and friends that are often with them on their camping adventures are also good, and a lot of fun. I do have a question, though, and fundamentally it's the Cabot Cove question. Don't park rangers have any shared, professional social media? Don't they share stories of the crazy guests the camps have? Hasn't anyone noticed that where the Shoemakers go, trouble follows, regardless of whether they cause any of it or not?

In the real world, I hope so. In this fictional world, I hope they keep on not noticing--at least, not unless Nortman can make an even better story out of that. I don't want these stories to stop.

And as always, Michelle Babb does an excellent job of narration.

Recommended.

I received a free copy of this audiobook from the narrator, and am reviewing it voluntarily. show less

This is the eighth book in the series. I have not read any of the others in the series. It is my first time reading this author. I first heard of this book at a Facebook party. I was excited about it because I love camping. I also found it intriguing that the mysteries will most likely move around. I found this to be interesting as locations, victims, suspects and witnesses will be different. I was wondering how that might affect the series and if I should start with the first book. Then I show more was notified I won a copy of this book.

I was able to enjoy the mystery with no problem at all. Yes there were hints of prior mysteries but nothing that made me feel as if I was left out of the loop. I loved the idea of family and friends going on camping adventures together. I felt right at home with Frannie and the gang. There was no awkwardness of being the outsider wondering about all I missed. It was the welcoming, friendly feeling you really do get from most campers. The reality show aspect was fun. Just imagining some actors out in the “wilds” building fires and living without luxuries was hilarious. I think the author did well with blending what we imagine they are like with what may be realistically more accurate. I don’t want to go into the mystery. I am always afraid of ruining the story. I enjoyed it. I thought it was fairly easy to solve but a fun book to read. I do want to go back and read prior books though it isn’t necessary. I just think the people were fun and the author did a wonderful job bringing the camping experience to me. I found the book to be appropriate for those who enjoy “clean” books. show less

Larry and Frannie Shoemaker, Larry's sister Jane Ann Ferraro and her husband Mickey, are out traveling in their campers again, this time to New Mexico. Having stopped briefly for gas and snacks on the last day before arriving at the campground near Roswell, they acquire a hitchhiker they're unaware of, in the cubby where some of their supplies are stashed. When they arrive, they park and hook up their campers, and, completely exhausted, collapse immediately into their beds, and sleep.

When show more they awake, their hitchhiker is already gone, and they head out sightseeing. In a happy change of pace from their previous adventures, this time they don't find a body.

Someone else finds a body.

Initially thought to be the body of an escaped convict, it's soon identified as the body of a hiker who had been staying in the same campground. The Ferraros and the Shoemakers had seen him leaving the campground for the day before they did. But he's wearing part of Larry's rainsuit, and was hit with what might have been the missing crossbar from the Shoemakers' grill, both of which were stored in the cubby, and are now missing.

Not finding the body themselves this time isn't going to make things any easier for the friends.

This is, as always, a light, enjoyable cozy mystery, enlivened this time by the escaped convict and a UFO cult somewhat similar to the Heaven's Gate cult founded in the 1970s, which blew up spectacularly in the late 1990s. When Jane Ann and Mickey are kidnapped along with their bright red camper, Larry and Frannie have to keep that from Larry and Jane Ann's mother as long as possible--while she's hoping to talk to Jane Ann to tell her an old school friend is back in their hometown.

It's fun to catch up with the old friends again, and as always they meet some likable and interesting people, as well.

Fun and enjoyable. As always, Michelle Babb is an excellent narrator.

Recommended.

I received a free copy of this audiobook from the narrator, and am reviewing it voluntarily. show less