Struck by Shillelagh: An Alana O'Neill Mystery with Vintage Recipes Includes Bonus Story: Thankful for Pie

I cannot say if I like this book or not. The second story was the best, the first one was too compressed and with too many characters. The books is well written, it would be interesting to read a full length novel.
Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher.

A cute murder mystery. Well written with a good plot and quirky cast of characters. I really enjoyed the author’s writing and look forward to reading more of her books. I recommend this book to fans of mysteries.

This book was another installment in the Alana O'Neill series by this author. I have not read any of the others, so I was a bit overwhelmed with all of the information crammed in the beginning of this book. Information overload! However, the storyline was good, as was the writing. But, of course, the recipes that were included were really good! I did like the book and the storyline and plan to read the other books in the series.

This book contains two short stories and recipes. (keep in mind that this is supposed to be 93 pages) Within the first 20% on my kindle, the author had introduced 15 different characters by name. Each time the flow of the story is interrupted because the author gives a sentence or two of information about how they are related to other people or some other tidbit of background information. It was way too much to keep track of for such a short story. I kept hoping no one else would show up; however, around 10 more people were added as time went on. The space would have been better used to let us know more about the important people. Most of the players made very small guest appearance and were never heard from again. Characterization just wasn’t there.

I liked the second story more than the first. There were fewer people and it was easier to remember how each person fit. The recipes look like they would be extremely easy to make as most of them contain things like a packaged cake mix.

Both stories were neatly and very quickly wrapped up.

For the main story, Struck by Shillelagh: An Alana O'Neill Mystery with Vintage Recipes, I was not aware it was in a series of books as I had not read this author before. I am not good with names, so being introduced to an entire town's worth of people in the first 1/4 of a book did not work for me, personally. I had difficulty remembering who was who. I'm not sure we needed to know the exact relationship each person in town had to one another. My main criticism is this should not have been a short novella, but a fully fleshed out novel. The medium doesn't lend itself to character back stories and there needed to be much more time before the crime took place so we could determine motives and personalities on our own.

I loved the premise of the story and may go and read the other books so I can learn who each of the characters are in their own right. The bonus story, Thankful for Pie, was set in a different locale and the author did a great job of letting us know the characters. Again, though, it was WAY to short to understand any kind of romance or mystery.

I look forward to future works from Ms. Alessio.

These two short stories were cute. Because they were so short there is not too much in the way of strong character development. The recipes were interesting and did not seem difficult at all. Struck by Shillelagh: An Alana O'Neill Mystery with Vintage Recipes is the longer of the two. The characters seem established, so this indicates it is part of a series. The bonus story, Thankful for Pie has a very different setting and characters. I wish it had been longer with more plot development.

This is the first work by Amy Alessio that I remember reading. It would be interesting to see these plots developed into longer more complex stories, there is potential here.

Interesting story (with a bonus story that's good too), but my favorite were the recipes at the end of the main story. GREAT! Even though the main event is the story, which I enjoyed, the recipes were the biggest "YEAH" for me. I recommend this book for that reason.

What a great book to read to get into the St. Patrick's Day spirit! Not to mention it has some fabulous recipes. I have always been a fan of these types of books and thoroughly enjoyed it. I would definitely recommend.

Book received from NetGalley.

It was a cute very short story, focused on a murder that happens on St. Patrick's Day. I liked it, but truthfully I liked the bonus story much better. That one is on a bakery who is having an issue with someone trying to sabotage their business. I thought that was better written and thought out.