Winter Wishes

Winter Witches of Holiday Haven, Book 4

By: Elle Adams

Narrated by: Helen Langford

Have yourself a very Merry Witchmas in Holiday Haven, where the magic and mystery of Christmas is snow joke!

After five years of running the Holiday Haven Inn, Carolyn Highcrest thinks she can handle anything. She and her best friend Mercy are determined to make their festive weekend celebrations the best they can possibly be, despite being surrounded by scheming rivals, melodramatic theatre group members and overenthusiastic carollers.

What Carol didn't anticipate was a visit from her eccentric family, whose knack for trouble and attachment to their cringeworthy custom-made hats threaten to derail her focus. To make things worse, a magical wishing box intended for the weekend's event disappears, and soon after, a string of inexplicable pranks hits the inn, seemingly a result of the box's powerful magic.

Carol is inclined to blame both the theft and the pranks on her long-term business rival, Janice, but all too soon, events are spiraling out of control. Can Carol fix the trouble before the holiday cheer is ruined?

©2020 Elle Adams (P)2022 Tantor

negative

I was disappointed with this book. After saying how much I was enjoying the series, this one let me down. the entire book was negative. bad things upon bad things happened. the last minutes were positive. but that didn't help all the negative feelings.

Never assume

I listened to this with the kids which they enjoyed. They caught on that assuming anything is a quick way to get in trouble. Here we follow two friends running an inn. They're having all kinds of issues they never expected and along the way they learned many lessons. They learned to never assume anything which is something the kids needed to learn. By the end of the we were all wrong about who did what and why. It's a great story of being blind to what is right in front of us until it bites you or close enough.

Plot Holes, Immature Protagonist, Skip It

So I have listened to some of Elle Adams Library Witch Mysteries volumes 1-3 before coming to this volume of the WWoHH series and knew she was not my favorite supernatural cozy mystery writer but was going to be open. However this was a rough listen. I think this is always difficult when I don't feel like the creator has really thought out how magic actually operates in the world they are building. So we are in a world where magic exists, people can do magic, and in this case order magical items that do magic, but are also somehow unable to resolve magic issues or ask others who would have to be well versed in magic for help. So an item that is available for folks to just order becomes both source of all the problem and the ONLY solution. I was baffled by how much the author was asking me to simply gloss over. And yes anyone who has spent time listening to this genre of stories expects the protagonist to throw themselves in danger by ineptly investigating things alone and making outlandish accusations that are almost entirely unfounded and ignore obvious information that most people would ask a few clarifying questions and resolve the whole mystery but this was painful in terms of the blatant lack of self awareness and just basic levels of curiosity. The protagonist Carol kept bad mouthing Janice an apparent competitor for business talking about Janice's mean attitude while herself behaving incredibly childishly (who knew the hotel industry in North Pole was so cut throat that both are constantly trying to cut each other down because I guess there are not enough guests for two Inns to stay afloat? I guess I just don't think of Holiday Inn and the Hyatt sabotaging each other in order to gain customers.). I also was dumbfounded by curses being thrown around where they had no idea long term effects and endangering the safety of everyone around or curses that were causing what would seem like thousands of dollars of damages but stating they shouldn't call any authorities and figure it out themselves WHILE running an Inn that is trying to hold a major event and expecting everyone to play along. This is also while someone else is threatening to call the authorities for them verbally accusing them of causing the curses. I just don't understand. Especially when this is in a series where other authors discuss magical authorities being involved, and folks in this town who are versed in addressing rogue magic that is causing disruption. I felt like the author was trying insanely hard to not connect to or participate with Holiday Haven literally refusing to mention anything outside of the Inn. The idea that someone would not be able to get supplies for Christmas themed items needed in the literal Christmas town of the North Pole and needed to order them made me face palm while listening. I have to be honest I will likely skip Elle's next volume in this series (book 9 Holiday Hijinks) as this really did not leave a good impression. Again this story is completely a stand alone so you can easily skip it without losing anything in the series.

Teenage pranks

Storyline relied on pranks, but no magic used to fix the issues. People turned into frogs left alone hoping they would revert by morning - no one questioned when a family member didn't return home? Lacks character development.

Not a fan at all

I couldn’t make it through this one. It was just to juvenile for me to get through

Very juvenile

I love this series. But, this installment was not on the same level as the others. I was disappointed.

very dry dismal narrating

could be a good story, couldnt get past the narration to be able to enjoy it

Grade School level project

I've enjoyed the previous entries in this series: good, light-hearted fun. But this one...painful.
The writing is juvenile. I honestly would not be surprised to find out this was written by a precocious middle school student. The dialog is stilted. Phrases are repeated in a lazy way. The plot is poor, with the characters routinely making nonsensical choices.
The voice performance isn't any better. It is comically overacted. The actor should consider sticking to books for very young children.

Boring story, bad narrator

The story dragged on and was just never exciting. The narrator made the story even worse. She seemed to just drag on reading like she had to get through the book. No passion, no inflection no life really.

Just a terrible “read” all around.

The other books in this series have made me laugh out loud and are very enjoyable and cute overall. This was a dud, unfortunately.