Shakespeare's Christmas (Lily Bard Mysteries, Book 3) | Charlaine Harris

Shakespeare's Christmas (Lily Bard Mysteries, Book 3) | Charlaine Harris | Three Murders and a Wedding

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	Shakespeare's Christmas (Lily Bard Mysteries, Book 3) Charlaine Harris Berkley, 2008 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 40 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Lily Bard heads home for the holidays.

Lily heads to her hometown of Bartley for her estranged sister?s Christmas Eve wedding. But there is something in the air besides holiday cheer?there?s murder. And Lily must work fast to clean up the messy case before her sister promises to love, honor, and obey a killer.

The best of Lily so far Shakespeare's Christmas!

I am a huge fan of Charlaine Harris and have read all of the Sookie Stackhouse books, so I started reading this series. At first I didn't know if I was going to like Lily Bard very much. I had a tough time getting through Shakespeare's Landlord but towards the end I was starting to enjoy Lily. The second book was good too, but now with Shakespeare's Christmas I am hooked. I am about to start Shakespeare's Trollop and can hardly wait.

The Lily Bard series gets to be very addicting and is such a fun and quick read. I love the relationship between Lily and Jack. Lily reminds me of a few people I have known who have gone through horrific things in their life so she does seem real to me. I think the way that she handles her relationship with Jack, and the fact that they both have a hard time with their feelings, is refreshing and how a lot of relationships are in real life.

I love the mystery and this time I really didn't see the ending coming. You know some of the details and get some hints but for once I didn't pinpoint the exact ending like I have done in the past. Charlaine Harris does a wonderful job of tying all the lose ends together and I like that she gives little updates about past characters, like Bobo.

If you like funny (but sometimes sarcastic), witty, suspense then this is your book! Enjoy your reading.

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Three Murders and a Wedding

Shakespeare's Christmas (1998) is the third mystery novel in the Lily Bard series, following Shakespeare's Champion. In the previous volume, Lily discovered that Jack was missing. She called Mookie and asked her to bring her rifle. They found one lookout on the loading dock and took him out. Then they entered the building and Mookie covered the others while Lily cut Jack free from the chair.

In this novel, Lily Bard cleans houses and does other housekeeping chores for her clients. She has lived in Shakespeare for about four years. She has also been involved in two criminal investigations.

Varena Bard is Lily's sister. She is a nurse in Bartley, Lily's hometown. Lily hasn't seen Varena for three years.

Jack Leeds is a private investigator in Little Rock. He has been dating Lily for the past seven weeks.

Bobo Winthrop is the eldest child of Howard and Beatrice. He now attends college in Florida. He still has a crush on Lily.

Carrie Thrush is Lily's doctor and a client of her cleaning services. She is struggling to repay her school loans. Lately she has been dating Claude Friedrich, the Shakespeare Chief of Police.

Dillard Kingery is Verana's fiancee. He is a pharmacist and owns a local pharmacy. Dill is a widower and his daughter Anna is eight years old.

In this story, Lily rides on a float -- really a pickup bed -- in the Shakespeare Christmas parade. She is more warmly dressed than the younger women on the Body Time float, but not as warm as Raphael, who is driving the pickup. She keeps smiling and throwing candy into the crowd. Her cheeks hurt from all the artificial smiling.

After the parade, Lily goes home and packs for her sister's wedding. She talks to Jack on the phone and asks him to spend Christmas with her. Then they awkwardly say goodbyes and Lily goes back to packing.

Lily will be a bridesmaid in the wedding and Varena has already bought the dress. Lily hopes that the dress matches her complexion and doesn't expose her scars. She still has to buy clothes for the showers and dinners.

Lily goes to Montrose to buy some party clothes. She meets Bobo there and explains her errand. Bobo asks what clothes she already has that would be proper for the occasions. Lily tells hem that she has one good black suit and Bobo is amazed. He shares what little he knows about clothing and leaves her with the clerk.

Lily has arranged with her clients to have the week off. She finishes the jobs remaining for this week. While cleaning Carrie's office, she reads an article about unsolved crimes. The item about Summer Dawn Macklesby attracts her attention.

Then Lily leaves for Bartley. She still dreads the rumor and pity that will emerge when she reaches her hometown. Her parents and sister are very concerned over her emotional health. Her father seems to believe that she is still physically weak and will break under a moderate load.

In Bartley, Lily meets several children who are friends of Anna. She picks up Eve -- daughter of Emory Ted and Meredith Osborn -- to give her a closer look at the bridal veil. Eve is really impressed with her strength.

Then Jack shows up for the wedding. He had originally intended to only support her in this trying situation, but then he got a call from another PI. His friend is now in the hospital from a heart attack and asks Jack to investigate a lead in the Summer Dawn Macklesby case.

Then someone kills a doctor and his nurse. Doctor LeMay had been practicing in Bartley for decades. Jack figures that the killer was after something in his office.

This tale has Lily asking questions while attending bridal showers and the rehearsal dinner. The lead has narrowed the current identity of the missing girl to one of three children. One is Anna and another is Eve. The third possibility is Krista O'Shea, daughter of the minister who will be officiating at Verana's wedding.

Lily has three days to find the kidnapper. The next installment is Shakespeare's Trollop. Read and enjoy!

Highly recommended for Harris Fans and anyone else who enjoys tales of cold blooded murder, southern living, and spunky heroines. For anyone not familiar with this series, the initial volume is Shakespeare's Landlord.

-Bill Jordin

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shakespeare's christmas

excellent series was confused which number this book was as in other books it does not appear in the lily bard series.

Kinda gross but that's just CH.

This book is a good mystery. However, the conclusion of truth revealed is gross. I know CH likes to push the envelope, as the last book was about racism, and she has written about rape, abuse, racism, incest, and pedophilia in the past. However, there was a moment toward the end where I decided it was just too much. Otherwise, the book was good minus the pedophilia/incest moment in the end. I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but she is portraying bad guys doing bad things, so the book is good even though I hated the bad acts of the fictional characters.

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more trouble for lily bard..

Poor Lily. Dealing (unhappily) with the fact that she must return to Bartley, her small, run-down home town,it only gets even worse once she arrives. She's to be the maid of honor at her younger sister's wedding, (plenty of awful and time consuming wedding planning-yikes!)but then there's the little problem that one of the three 8-year-old little girls in town isn't who she thinks she is, and that one of the parents is in big trouble. Oh, and did I mention that one of the little girls is Lily's niece to be? So of course it's up to Lily (and Jack) to solve the case before Varena walks down te isle with a possible child-napper.

This book was good, and I've read that some other reviewers thought that the ending was "gross." Now, I'm not saying that messing around with children in an inappropriate way isn't awfully wrong and just plain disgusting, but really. She could have been a whole lot grosser with the account of the little girl. Thank GOD Charlaine Harris knows when to stop pushing the envelope. She is informative and at times edgy, but at least she's got class. I didn't think anything about this book was "gross" on Charlaine Harris's part. I thought it was great! I can't wait to start reading Shakespeare's Trollop tomorrow!

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

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