Review of Dash Away All by Christina Freeburn

From the publisher of Dash Away All

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…Merry Winters is excited for her dream-come-true moment: Being an on-site crafter for a Christmas movie. The tidings of joy are short-lived as she finds herself becoming a referee, dealing with a raging Ebenezer, participating in a bucket brigade, and finding evidence in a “murder.”

Is someone trying to stop the production or is it tied to a secret someone has on Luna Carmichael, the star of the movie and the queen of Christmas?

When Marie, Luna’s assistant, stumbles away from a car accident and dies, Merry believes the accident wasn’t quite so accidental. Was Luna or Marie the target? Merry finds more questions than answers, but one thing is certain: Everyone has an ulterior motive for being part of the production—including Marie.

After another murder, Merry wonders if the deaths are tied to a baby born long ago and abandoned. And more importantly, will Merry live long enough to find out?

My review

Merry Winters is a likable protagonist with a very interesting job, a professional crafter. A crafting mystery centered around the set of a movie intrigued me. There was plenty of both in this well-plotted cozy. The storyline was logically laid out, beginning with Merry being hired to handle the Christmas crafts on the movie to her involvement in the investigation of her friends’ murder to the inevitable story resolution.

Dialogue flowed naturally between characters, even at those points where the author needed to provide backstory to move the things forward. Overall, I felt entertained from beginning to end with one exception based on a personal preference of mine. I’m not a fan of rhetorical questions in exposition, which is a popular tool used by many authors. Consequently, I sometimes skimmed through those sections to get to the next bit of action or dialogue.