What do you think?
Rate this book
The Puzzling Cruise: Book Three: The Fun Cruise Mysteries A Sweet Romantic Cozy Cruise Mystery
Veronica White named the third Fun Cruise Ship Fantastic Fun, and decided the Inaugural Voyage would feature a Puzzle Tournament.Janine Taylor couldn’t resist. She loved puzzles, she loved cruising and she was beginning to become pretty interesting in getting to know Chief Security Officer David Marsden better.What she’d hoped to be a romantic Caribbean Cruise quick became full of the wrong kind of puzzles, the kind she and David needed to solve before disaster struck Fantastic Fun!
- GenresMystery
76 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 11, 2021
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
January 2, 2022
A fun fast paced story
This is the first book I have read in the series. It combines a mystery with a fun cruise background. I enjoyed reading this light hearted book.
This is the first book I have read in the series. It combines a mystery with a fun cruise background. I enjoyed reading this light hearted book.
December 11, 2021
Review of The Puzzling Cruise by Lizzie Josephson
I first bought a Lizzie Josephson cosy mystery a few years ago. I like the idea of cosy mysteries that are short and sit easy with the reader. This is an easy read and like other offerings from the author, I usually like her style of writing. The characters are usually well contrived and have voices.
What the hell happened here? This book has got me stumped and now I am wondering what I saw in her writing in the first place. Am I missing something or is the author not a writer at all but a number of other writers who have joined together without a half-decent editor amongst them?
This book is curated with the American reader in mind and not an international readership.
If you have read my reviews before you will know that I suffer the contradictions between American-English and British English but only to a point. Cosy or Cozy being typical examples. So to read this book you must have your American -English readers head on but to read this review you need your British-English head on. The Puzzling Cruise by Lizzie Josephson is a standalone story that does link to other books in the series but without the reader needing previous knowledge of the characters mentioned.
The storyline
The cruise line is renaming a new ship for its Fun Cruise liners and a new crew is named for it. Many of them have worked together. At the head of the list of names are Victoria, David, Pauline and Dory. A regular cruiser is Janine, David’s girlfriend.
In a change to previous cruises when a ship makes its maiden voyage under a new name the cruise director is moving away from regular baking and food related competitions and gone for a Puzzle Tournament. A free two week cruise, with all the trimmings is up for grabs.
Over nine hundred passengers are entering the tournament. Alongside the struggles of winning the puzzle tournament, a group of thieves are intent on stealing as much luxury goods as they can. They need to be caught. The tournament is also throwing up some surprises by puzzlers who are intent of winning at any cost. When one of the crew is kidnapped, the stakes get higher.
What I liked:
The storyline is simple, the concept easy without over-complication.
What I didn't like:
If you review a book, it is only fair that you argue the case for content, characters’ voices and necessary punctuation. Let’s start at the beginning and see how far we get before I have a comment. Stop. I am on Page 1 and I have started. The introduction gives the reader a tease, such as we might find in the back cover of the book which is obviously not a good place to put it in a pdf, so it is here. My issue is that it is not labelled as an introduction, a forward or teaser. What am I looking at?
On a formatting issue, why does the menu contain a heading of Table of Contents when there isn't one? No list of chapters or chapter titles. It is very difficult to find your way around the storyline unless you enter bookmarks.
Page 2. The subtitle needs rethinking. Written as “A Sweet Romantic Cozy Cruise Mystery”, it is nothing like sweet or romantic. A Cozy Cruise Mystery? Yes, it is, but it is not sweet, or ever romantic unless you are referring to a couple of kisses.
The worst thing though is the absolutely appalling overuse of capital letters when it was not necessary. The main comment I have added to my version of the book was ‘No Capitals Required.’ Time and time again this was my comment.
One thing I don’t understand is why the ship's theatre (written throughout as Theater) does not have a great name like the Aruba Lounge or the Trinidad Deck. Why Theater., why not the Star Theater or the Fun Theater?
I am not going to bore the reader with a load of page numbers because there are too many but consider this. Every deck has a name that is capitalised, and every destination is capitalised. The words Ship, Theater and Brig all have capital letters for most of the voyage, her Company is another. Does the Inaugural Voyage have to be written in initial capital letters every time it is used?
In today’s world ‘coming out’ often means declaring yourself as LBGTQ+. What happens when a ship comes out or is coming out bears difficulty thinking about. Again, my technical head is having issues with my emotional one and neither can work out why this phrase is still here.
Chapter numbers and chapter subtitles
Most of the book has chapter numbers and subtitles. The latter is usually centred below the former. However, some readers will see that some chapter headings do not follow this rule. At least one chapter number is missing, and another has the subtitle left-justified instead of centre-justified.
Acronyms. Consider the reader. If you introduce an acronym you must be certain the reader will understand its use. MC is used throughout the book, yet only at the end of the book is it written out in full. If you do not understand that MC=Master of Ceremonies it is not surprising that the MC is not the Master Chef you thought he was.
PA is also written as P.A. Acronyms are not written this way anymore, not even in America. The PA is the public address system. Most people I have cruised with understand it as a tannoy or call it the ship’s system. Th whole PA lark is a non-starter for me.
Commas
There is a total overuse of the comma. It should not be used to extend a paragraph more than three times, and in a book that sets itself up to be digested in small chunks of text, it is surprising that at the end of the book the reader is asked to chomp on some hefty paragraph content.
Behaviours
Cosy/Cozy mysteries seem to have developed where their style is not to use much in the way of description to allow the reader to identify with a particular person, the environment or the time of day. The characters in this book have no dress sense or otherwise that we can tell apart from some of the crew who wear tee-shirts. Time has no meaning and using ‘o’clock’ without adding morning or afternoon can lose the reader. I cannot even tell if anyone enjoyed their food on this voyage because the smell of the sea or the saltiness of the steak is never mentioned. You’re in the Caribbean for whatever reason but where are the smells, people and occasion of the cruise.
Voices
The voice of a character must remain constant throughout the story unless the storyline tells us otherwise. If a timid secretary becomes empowered by events in the storyline then the author has a duty to show it to the reader. If a person suddenly finds a love for fish he never had before, then tell us why. (These examples do not appear in the storyline).
If the voice and speech of a character changes in the last pages of the book as this story does, the reader is entitled to ask why.
There is more than one editor on this project. This is, to coin a phrase, a case of too many cooks in the kitchen.
In summary
This book should be taken back to the publisher’s agents and sack them all.
Not a bad story and not terribly written but very badly edited. Give the monkeys fresh paper and tell them to start again.
Maybe this writer has been on too many cruises that he/she no longer feels excited at the travel? The last word(s) sum oy up nicely. It is written as ‘boyfriend’sintentions.’
Four stars for the story. I quite enjoyed it. As a cosy read, it wasn’t too bad.
Only two stars for the spelling, formatting and uses of the synonym option. It wasn’t bad at the beginning but after I reached the likelihood of three editors it went downhill fast. There could have been six easily.
Who am I?
My pen name is Rhiw Sider. I have one book to my name, so why are you here? Normally I work as a technical author and many of the grammatical errors I see in fiction might have come from someone who has a technical background. But only some.
Yes, I am English, but things have improved in my life because I now live in Wales.
I first bought a Lizzie Josephson cosy mystery a few years ago. I like the idea of cosy mysteries that are short and sit easy with the reader. This is an easy read and like other offerings from the author, I usually like her style of writing. The characters are usually well contrived and have voices.
What the hell happened here? This book has got me stumped and now I am wondering what I saw in her writing in the first place. Am I missing something or is the author not a writer at all but a number of other writers who have joined together without a half-decent editor amongst them?
This book is curated with the American reader in mind and not an international readership.
If you have read my reviews before you will know that I suffer the contradictions between American-English and British English but only to a point. Cosy or Cozy being typical examples. So to read this book you must have your American -English readers head on but to read this review you need your British-English head on. The Puzzling Cruise by Lizzie Josephson is a standalone story that does link to other books in the series but without the reader needing previous knowledge of the characters mentioned.
The storyline
The cruise line is renaming a new ship for its Fun Cruise liners and a new crew is named for it. Many of them have worked together. At the head of the list of names are Victoria, David, Pauline and Dory. A regular cruiser is Janine, David’s girlfriend.
In a change to previous cruises when a ship makes its maiden voyage under a new name the cruise director is moving away from regular baking and food related competitions and gone for a Puzzle Tournament. A free two week cruise, with all the trimmings is up for grabs.
Over nine hundred passengers are entering the tournament. Alongside the struggles of winning the puzzle tournament, a group of thieves are intent on stealing as much luxury goods as they can. They need to be caught. The tournament is also throwing up some surprises by puzzlers who are intent of winning at any cost. When one of the crew is kidnapped, the stakes get higher.
What I liked:
The storyline is simple, the concept easy without over-complication.
What I didn't like:
If you review a book, it is only fair that you argue the case for content, characters’ voices and necessary punctuation. Let’s start at the beginning and see how far we get before I have a comment. Stop. I am on Page 1 and I have started. The introduction gives the reader a tease, such as we might find in the back cover of the book which is obviously not a good place to put it in a pdf, so it is here. My issue is that it is not labelled as an introduction, a forward or teaser. What am I looking at?
On a formatting issue, why does the menu contain a heading of Table of Contents when there isn't one? No list of chapters or chapter titles. It is very difficult to find your way around the storyline unless you enter bookmarks.
Page 2. The subtitle needs rethinking. Written as “A Sweet Romantic Cozy Cruise Mystery”, it is nothing like sweet or romantic. A Cozy Cruise Mystery? Yes, it is, but it is not sweet, or ever romantic unless you are referring to a couple of kisses.
The worst thing though is the absolutely appalling overuse of capital letters when it was not necessary. The main comment I have added to my version of the book was ‘No Capitals Required.’ Time and time again this was my comment.
One thing I don’t understand is why the ship's theatre (written throughout as Theater) does not have a great name like the Aruba Lounge or the Trinidad Deck. Why Theater., why not the Star Theater or the Fun Theater?
I am not going to bore the reader with a load of page numbers because there are too many but consider this. Every deck has a name that is capitalised, and every destination is capitalised. The words Ship, Theater and Brig all have capital letters for most of the voyage, her Company is another. Does the Inaugural Voyage have to be written in initial capital letters every time it is used?
In today’s world ‘coming out’ often means declaring yourself as LBGTQ+. What happens when a ship comes out or is coming out bears difficulty thinking about. Again, my technical head is having issues with my emotional one and neither can work out why this phrase is still here.
Chapter numbers and chapter subtitles
Most of the book has chapter numbers and subtitles. The latter is usually centred below the former. However, some readers will see that some chapter headings do not follow this rule. At least one chapter number is missing, and another has the subtitle left-justified instead of centre-justified.
Acronyms. Consider the reader. If you introduce an acronym you must be certain the reader will understand its use. MC is used throughout the book, yet only at the end of the book is it written out in full. If you do not understand that MC=Master of Ceremonies it is not surprising that the MC is not the Master Chef you thought he was.
PA is also written as P.A. Acronyms are not written this way anymore, not even in America. The PA is the public address system. Most people I have cruised with understand it as a tannoy or call it the ship’s system. Th whole PA lark is a non-starter for me.
Commas
There is a total overuse of the comma. It should not be used to extend a paragraph more than three times, and in a book that sets itself up to be digested in small chunks of text, it is surprising that at the end of the book the reader is asked to chomp on some hefty paragraph content.
Behaviours
Cosy/Cozy mysteries seem to have developed where their style is not to use much in the way of description to allow the reader to identify with a particular person, the environment or the time of day. The characters in this book have no dress sense or otherwise that we can tell apart from some of the crew who wear tee-shirts. Time has no meaning and using ‘o’clock’ without adding morning or afternoon can lose the reader. I cannot even tell if anyone enjoyed their food on this voyage because the smell of the sea or the saltiness of the steak is never mentioned. You’re in the Caribbean for whatever reason but where are the smells, people and occasion of the cruise.
Voices
The voice of a character must remain constant throughout the story unless the storyline tells us otherwise. If a timid secretary becomes empowered by events in the storyline then the author has a duty to show it to the reader. If a person suddenly finds a love for fish he never had before, then tell us why. (These examples do not appear in the storyline).
If the voice and speech of a character changes in the last pages of the book as this story does, the reader is entitled to ask why.
There is more than one editor on this project. This is, to coin a phrase, a case of too many cooks in the kitchen.
In summary
This book should be taken back to the publisher’s agents and sack them all.
Not a bad story and not terribly written but very badly edited. Give the monkeys fresh paper and tell them to start again.
Maybe this writer has been on too many cruises that he/she no longer feels excited at the travel? The last word(s) sum oy up nicely. It is written as ‘boyfriend’sintentions.’
Four stars for the story. I quite enjoyed it. As a cosy read, it wasn’t too bad.
Only two stars for the spelling, formatting and uses of the synonym option. It wasn’t bad at the beginning but after I reached the likelihood of three editors it went downhill fast. There could have been six easily.
Who am I?
My pen name is Rhiw Sider. I have one book to my name, so why are you here? Normally I work as a technical author and many of the grammatical errors I see in fiction might have come from someone who has a technical background. But only some.
Yes, I am English, but things have improved in my life because I now live in Wales.
December 3, 2021
Cruising❣️ Always Binge-worthy❣️
Wow❣️Just keeps getting better and better❣️
Very anxious to read more . . .
Next please⁉️ More and more difficult to put down . . .
Wow❣️Just keeps getting better and better❣️
Very anxious to read more . . .
Next please⁉️ More and more difficult to put down . . .
October 20, 2021
Two Crimes on the same cruise.
The Fun Book Series is a lot of entertainment. Loveable characters and this cruise held a Puzzle Challenge for the passengers instead of a cook off. I enjoyed this book the most. Then to add a kick to the book were two different crimes that had nothing to do with each other.
Lizzie's two different cruise lines books are wonderfully well written and make me feel like I am on the cruise and part of the stories. I can't wait to see what see comes up with next.
The Fun Book Series is a lot of entertainment. Loveable characters and this cruise held a Puzzle Challenge for the passengers instead of a cook off. I enjoyed this book the most. Then to add a kick to the book were two different crimes that had nothing to do with each other.
Lizzie's two different cruise lines books are wonderfully well written and make me feel like I am on the cruise and part of the stories. I can't wait to see what see comes up with next.
September 17, 2021
Fun mystery with 2 separate groups of bad gùys
Different theme of cruise appealing to New group of readers. Seems to be steering towards thematic cruises being the "fun" cruises as opposed to typical older richer folks cruises. Puzzles are an interesting new topic for a cruise.
Different theme of cruise appealing to New group of readers. Seems to be steering towards thematic cruises being the "fun" cruises as opposed to typical older richer folks cruises. Puzzles are an interesting new topic for a cruise.
November 8, 2021
So, we get away from the food fights and do trivia??? I love it!!! Not trivia but Puzzles??? Okay, I can handle that!!! Then there is all the behind-the-scenes bad stuff… I enjoyed the story and recommend the book.
September 15, 2021
Puzzle this
A quick read. I liked the story. Enjoy the characters. I like how they have changed over the last couple of stories.
Some spelling errors.
A quick read. I liked the story. Enjoy the characters. I like how they have changed over the last couple of stories.
Some spelling errors.
March 14, 2022
Crosswords, sudoku and a puzzling cruise!
The third ship in the Fun Cruise Line, Fantastic Fun, is getting ready to sail. This ship is a lot bigger than the first two, and instead of the Cooking Contest with the French Chef from hell, they plan on hosting a Puzzle Tournament, with all kinds of puzzles! Janine is invited on the cruise by her boyfriend who is Chief Security Officer. But there’s a different contest going on between two of the puzzlers, and another group with nefarious plans! Can this cruise succeed! Another great cruise mystery! Clean with a little romance!
The third ship in the Fun Cruise Line, Fantastic Fun, is getting ready to sail. This ship is a lot bigger than the first two, and instead of the Cooking Contest with the French Chef from hell, they plan on hosting a Puzzle Tournament, with all kinds of puzzles! Janine is invited on the cruise by her boyfriend who is Chief Security Officer. But there’s a different contest going on between two of the puzzlers, and another group with nefarious plans! Can this cruise succeed! Another great cruise mystery! Clean with a little romance!
May 3, 2022
Book #3 is just as good as the first two books in the series. I loved the puzzle theme because it's a different type of entertainment for people who love to cruise on the seven seas. The cruise starting
with different issues gave me two different scenarios to investigate. The first story line was somewhat confusing, but not as hard as the second one. The second was great because of all the different puzzles used as part of the plot & quite honestly, I was surprised by how the book ended.
with different issues gave me two different scenarios to investigate. The first story line was somewhat confusing, but not as hard as the second one. The second was great because of all the different puzzles used as part of the plot & quite honestly, I was surprised by how the book ended.
April 15, 2023
A really "fun" cozy cruise ship mystery
I love cozy cruise ship mysteries and I'm really enjoying this new series. All the main characters are fun. I particularly liked the storylines in this book. If you enjoy cozy cruise ship mysteries, I believe you would be interested in this book/series.
I love cozy cruise ship mysteries and I'm really enjoying this new series. All the main characters are fun. I particularly liked the storylines in this book. If you enjoy cozy cruise ship mysteries, I believe you would be interested in this book/series.
January 19, 2022
Another fun one
I enjoyed this one. I liked seeing Janine and David again. The plot was similar to some of the other ones, but it was still a lot of fun. These are just a nice, light read.
I enjoyed this one. I liked seeing Janine and David again. The plot was similar to some of the other ones, but it was still a lot of fun. These are just a nice, light read.
April 23, 2022
There are thieves on board the Fantastic Fun ship while almost 1,000 passengers compete in a puzzle contest to win a free cruise for two. One of the contestants is a bit too anxious for her friend to win!
March 13, 2022
A maiden voyage for a new cruise ship includes puzzle contests and jewelry thieves.
May 29, 2022
This book is fun. It is full of cruise trivia, intrigue, mystery, love interest and making you want more.
Love these short books.
Love these short books.
March 8, 2023
A fun book to read. Since I enjoy puzzles of any kind I really like the idea of having a puzzle contest on this cruise story.
February 3, 2024
A great addition to the series.
The characters are wonderful. The plot is twisty and interesting. The world building is great. I'm looking forward to reading the next book.
The characters are wonderful. The plot is twisty and interesting. The world building is great. I'm looking forward to reading the next book.
June 12, 2026
I really enjoy these cruise mysteries. They are just long enough to have a plot that can be developed while the story moves along. Perfect for a quick read between longer books.
March 3, 2022
Great book, like all the books featuring the cruise ships. While reading those books written by Lizzie Josephson, I feel I’m part of the cruise, enjoying all the goodies those ships can offer
I love those books so much, that I haven’t and I wouldn’t miss any one of them
I love those books so much, that I haven’t and I wouldn’t miss any one of them
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews