A great book by a fantastic author. The writing is excellent and the mystery keeps you turning the pages. Characters are well developed. Highly recommend.

I really enjoyed this first in series. The setting was unique and contained some humor to go along with a well planned mystery. I’m looking forward to reading the next in the series.

Tallie is a strong character in the debut of this series. Divorced, she picks up house cleaning jobs to begin her life anew. After she finds a client deceased, she and her fellow characters begin to look into things. I am glad I waited a bit to read this, I won't have as long to wait for the next in the series. I do hope there is more growth for the characters and the secondary characters I hope to see again return.

This was really entertaining. Just when you think things are going to slow down, something else happens. It took twists and turns that I never expected. It was definitely a good way to spend the afternoon.

Funny cosy mystery set around a funeral home as Tallie Graver tries to find out who killed one of her 'friends'.

Secrets and lies abound, as they are wont to do in a mystery book, as is the occasional murder with a sprinkling of romance and a heaped dose of humour.

*Huge thanks to Misty Simon, Kensington Books and NetGalley for this copy which I chose to read and all opinions are my own*

Cremains of the Day by Misty Simon
Book #1: Tallie Graver Mystery
Source: Netgalley
My Rating 4½/5 stars

As luck goes, Tallie Graver really has none. She married a colossal jerk, she divorced said colossal jerk, colossal jerk got nearly everything in the divorce which has left Tallie cleaning the homes of the people she once called friends in order to make ends meet. As happiness goes, Tallie Graver has a lot! Getting out of her loveless marriage was the best thing she ever did for herself, and though she’s once again living at home, working part time for her family’s funeral home, and cleaning houses for a living, Tallie has never been happier.

Tallie will be the first to admit, she wasn’t the nicest of humans while married to her ex and his money. Since the divorce, Tallie has been working hard to correct that behavior and make amends to those she wronged in the past. One of those people is the town sheriff who has no love for Tallie and even less so when she calls in a crime scene involving her sleazy ex-husband. The sheriff’s intense dislike and suspicion of Tallie only increases when, just day’s after the attack on her ex, Tallie calls in a murder in the home of one of her clients.

Damn! Can’t a newly divorced girl catch a break??

As it happens, no! With one surly, injured ex and a dead client, Tallie (and the sheriff!) feel it’s in her best interest to lay low. Trouble is, death and taxes wait for no man. Tallie already has the death, and the hot new guy who has been following her around is the tax man, and the news he has for Tallie isn’t encouraging. Though she wasn’t aware of the situation, Tallie’s ex seems to have gotten into a load of trouble with the IRS and if Tallie can’t track down his hidden funds, he isn’t the only going to be held responsible for the monster bill that will come due.

Though the trouble with her ex and the dead client feel like they shouldn’t be related, Tallie surmises they are indeed related and if she can solve one mystery, she can solve both and save her own hide. With the hot tax man by her side, Tallie begins to poke around, snoop, take things that look like evidence, and generally cause the sheriff a great deal of grief. As these things tend to go, the guilty don’t care for the innocent poking around in their business which leads Tallie down the path to ever more trouble. By the time all is said and done, Tallie has most of the town in an uproar, more than one guilty person running scared, and the sheriff regularly threatening to put her in jail. Not a bad day’s work for a house-cleaning divorcee.

The Bottom Line: You know what? I liked this book a lot!! Tallie Graver is what my granny would have called plucky and I sure appreciate that quality in a girl. Once she got out from under (literally and figuratively) her sleazy ex, Tallie decided to live her life on her terms, and that’s when Tallie Graver became a decent and interesting human being 😊 Getting involved in mystery solving wasn’t where Tallie saw her life going, but it turns out, she’s pretty good, much to the sheriff’s great displeasure. What really hooked me with this book is all the crazy; from one page to the next it’s a matter of “What fresh hell is this?” and I loved every minute of it. From the outrageous attitudes and behaviors of the wealthy to the antics of the not so wealthy and desperate, this cozy mystery has a bit of everything including a bit of romance that is sure to continue in the next installment of the series. In all, a fine start to a new series!

Princess Fuzzypants:here:
Poor Tassie. Once a rich Society snob, she is now cleaning houses for the people in her former social circle. She gladly shed her despicable husband but is now struggling to make ends meet and trying to re-establish her relationships with the people who were beneath her while she was riding high. It could have been easy not to like her for her former snobbery but she has returned to being a decent human.
So when she finds her husband stun gunned in an alley and one of her clients dead in a closet, the local chief of police, who remembered her cavalier attitude towards “the little people”, thinks she makes a dandy suspect.
Then a former childhood friend who works for the Tax Department shows up. He informs her she is in a pile of trouble thanks to her ex despite being totally unaware of his financial dealings. Her friend is trying to keep her out of trouble but trouble keeps finding her. To make matters worse, she finds yet another body. At least she is keeping her family’s funeral business busy.
This is a good book. The characters are endearing, including the kitty who helps solve the mystery, the plot is twisty and intriguing with just enough quirk to make it fun.
Five purrs and two paws up.

This was a fun read. Tallie had the 'good' life, but is now cleaning houses of her former friends. She finds the body of one and then her troubles start. I'm looking forward to more in the series .

Dollycas’s Thoughts

The Graver family business is funerals, how appropriate, but Tallulah Graver wanted out so she married Waldo Phillips III. While staying married to him kept her in a nice lifestyle and away from dead people she could stand Waldo one more minute and left him with almost everything and moved into the apartment over her family’s funeral home. To survive on her own she works there part time and now cleans houses like the one she used to live in. That is until she finds one of her clients stabbed to death. Add to that she finds her ex tasered behind her friend Gina’s shop and there is a flower delivery man following her everywhere. Tallie has not had a good week. The bumbling police have her at the top of their suspect list for both Waldo’s attack and the murder. The only way to prove them wrong is sweep the clues together herself and hand them to the police on a silver platter or in an open casket, whichever works best.

Misty Simon has given readers a great mystery to start off this series. Tallulah Graver (Tallie) is a strong protagonist. She does her best to shake off her old life and get on with her new one. How she ever stayed with that jerk of a husband as long as she did is beyond me. He deserved to be tasered or worse. His actions put Tallie in a very precarious situation. A first class jackass! Yes, there is a bit of course language in the book and considering where Waldo was tasered an adult theme. It didn’t bother me a bit because the language fits the situations and the other added some timeless humor.

The primary and secondary characters were well written and there is plenty of room for growth in the main characters. The dialogue was realistic and engaging. The flower delivery man was such a clever twist to the story and I will not say more because I do not want to ruin the story for you. I really liked it.

The book sets a nice pace and the mystery unfolds very nicely with some exciting twists. There were several suspects and some very interesting discoveries. I was very entertained by the way it all played out.

For the first book in the series I was very impressed. I could easily picture the funeral home and Tallie’s apartment as well as the mansion where the murder took place. I hope to see more development in the setting, getting to know the town and more of its residents better in future installments. The ending left me very happy and looking forward to the next book in the series. Grounds of Remorse is “coming soon” according to the final page of my e-copy.

A mystery like no other I have read. I look forward to the book from author Misty Simon.

Cremains of the Day by Misty Simon is the first installment in A Tallie Graver Mystery series. Tallulah “Tallie” Graver has fallen hard after the dissolution of her marriage to Walden Phillips III. She is now cleaning homes and working part-time at Graver Funeral Home, the family business. Tallie left her vacuum at Darla Hackersham’s home and returns to retrieve it. She discovers feet sticking out of a closet and finds Darla with a knife sticking out of her chest. This is just the beginning of strange events plaguing Tallie. Max Bennett, an old friend of Tallie’s brother, has returned to town and seems to be following Tallie. He is handsome, but it unnerving. She finds Katie tied up in Gina’s shop and her ex-husband down in the alley. What is going on? Tallie needs to unearth the truth before she ends up the next customer at her family’s business.

Cremains of the Day is not what I expected. I was hoping for a mystery series that centers around the Graver Funeral Home (it would have been unique). Tallie dislikes the family business and is eager to avoid it (I was eager to avoid her). I thought the characters lacked development. The details readers are given on Tallie are mostly about her marriage and what has happened since it dissolved (along with the fact that she really dislikes the family business). I found her very cliché (another clumsy, down-on-her luck divorcee who does not get along with the local chief of police). She is newly divorced from a disdainful man whom she let take advantage of her in the divorce settlement (of course). There is little information given on the town and local businesses. The mystery is medium level with some nice misdirection. There is mild foul language in Cremains of the Day along with some crude references to Tallie’s ex-husbands privates (they get zapped with a stun gun). The next book in A Tallie Graver Mystery series is Grounds for Remorse (I will not be reading it).

Cremains of the Day by Misty Simon is the first book in the Tallie Graver Mystery series. Tallie is recently divorced from her wealthy husband Waldo. She is now cleaning the homes of the people she used to call friends. This is her way of not getting sucked back into the family funeral business. Her new job is even less exciting when she finds the body of one of her employers in a closet. That is only the start of everything that is going on in this book. I did enjoy the book, but a bit less chaos would be a good thing.

It’s an entertaining book. Tallulah is quite funny, regretful about her actions/behaviour when she was married, so she’s trying to make up for it. It was a bit difficult to figure out who the murderer was. It’s quite fast, and easy to follow.

I want to thank Kensington Books and NetGalley for providing me with an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review. I appreciate this opportunity!

Synopsis: Tallie is married to a wealthy man and is happy with her lifestyle. She never wanted to have to be running her family business, The Graver Funeral Home. She felt that she made the right decision by marrying up in the world. Suddenly when Tallie is divorced she has to find a way to make ends meet. She has to find a way to not go back to the family business!

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Tallie picks up the pieces after her divorce and winds up working as a cleaner for socialites that once were her friends. Even though it’s a huge step down on the social ladder she will do anything to make ends meet and not end up at the funeral home.

When Tallie finally starts to get adjusted, she walks into a friend’s shop to find her ex and a woman unconscious. With her ex stun gunned in just the right place and finding dead bodies, Tallie finds herself smack dab in the middle of one crazy experience after another. Tallie has no choice but to get to the bottom of things in hopes of avoiding danger.

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Review: I give Cremains of the Day 5 out of 5 stars! This was just the fun cozy I was looking for to lighten my mood. I loved Tallie’s characterization and felt I could sympathize with her. This book definitely shows how social status can affect someone and their life. This was a fun book and a great start for a new series. I highly recommend this book!

Tallie Graver use to be a part of the “inner circle” of rich folks in her small town, until she left her awful husband, Waldo, and now finds herself living above her father’s funeral home and cleaning the houses of those she used to gossip with. When her ex is found in an alley, knocked out by a stun-gun blast to the balls, Tallie finds herself the prime suspect. In an effort to clear her name, Tallie keeps finding herself in more trouble with every turn. Tallie just wants to get back on her feet and re-establish herself post-Waldo, but bad things keep happening, and Tallie keeps finding herself in the middle of it.
I found this book entertaining most of the time, somewhat jumbled at other times, but overall was an enjoyable story. Tallie was a likeable character for me, and this is the reason I kept reading; nothing kills a story like an unlikeable lead. She’s sassy, ballsy, and trying to rebuild her life. However, sometimes she just isn’t too sharp. There were a few times where Tallie just fails to see what was far too obvious to me as the reader. Other times she jumps to conclusions with no clear/logical path, so it felt jumbled a bit. Then there were the seemingly never ending references to the tingles and twinges she felt around Max, including the first time she sees him in the story, thinking him a complete stranger. I don’t really need to know you’re tingling looking at this dude, and I definitely don’t need to be reminded of it multiple times. Sorry, just not what I’m looking for in a cozy mystery.
That being said, I’m still interested enough to see where Tallie goes from here. The characters are likeable and for that alone I’m curious to see what comes next for them.

Tallulah Graver used to be a wealthy society wife, and she wasn't always the nicest person in those days. Now, as she's getting through a difficult divorce, she's reduced to cleaning the houses where she used to be entertained, and some of her old friends -- now employers -- are enjoying her troubles a little too much..

It's made her a nicer person. She's also working part time in her family's funeral home, and saving up for the day when she can open her own tea room.

Life is not easy, but Tallie is plucky and she's making progress toward the better life she envisions. Then a dead body turns up in one of the places she's cleaning. And a tax investigator tells her she may be on the hook for a hefty tax bill for her ex-husband's shady financial shenanigans.

This book has plenty of twists and turns, but it's mostly all about the relationships. The characters are complicated and intense, and I look forward to seeing them develop in future books in the series.

Cremains of the Day by Misty Simon is the 1st book in A Tallie Graver Mystery series, and a great start. This book made me laugh out loud, it was so funny. Once I started this book, I could not stop reading it until I was done. Not only is this book an exciting mystery but also very refreshing and a quick read. If you love fun cozy mysteries, which are my favorite, I strongly recommend this book.

I received this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Cremains of the Day starts strong with a funny opening and a cute premise. This whodunnit, features Tallie, a recently divorced socialite who now spends her days as a maid to the trophy wives she use to gossip with. Forced to live above the family business, a funeral parlor, Tallie is thrown into a world of intrigue when her ex is attacked, a socialite is murdered, and a dishy tax investigator comes to town. As a suspect, she is compelled to do a little amateur sleuthing and may just fall in love along the way.

This is a great book with a wonderful story and well developed characters. The story flowed very well and was very enjoyable. This book will keep you reading long into the night and you will not want to put this book down until you finish. This was such a great read and full of surprises. I voluntarily reviewed an advanced reader’s copy of this book. The free book held no determination on my personal review.

Money isn't everything, but it certainly helps. In many instances those with money look down upon those without. Tallie has seen both sides of the coin. Her desire to distance herself from the family funeral business and an ex-husband leads her to cleaning the homes of her formerly snooty friends. And then the body count begins. Who is behind the deaths and why. The chief of police thinks it might be Tallie, but I think because it is a small town and he has known her all her life that he just likes to give her a hard time. There is a hint of romance, tax evasion, murder and more. A fun beginning to a series. I look forward to reading the next one.