A Killer Edition
Hardcover, 318 pages
Expected publication: August 13th 2019 by Berkley
Goodreads synopsis:
Murder's in the mix for mystery bookstore owner and amateur sleuth Tricia Miles, in the latest entry to Lorna Barret's New York Times bestselling Booktown series.
With her assistant, Pixie, picking up more responsibility around the shop, Tricia Miles suddenly has a lot more time on her hands. Tricia decides to join the local animal-rescue board and enter the Great Stoneham Bake-Off, but neither pans out as smoothly as she’d hoped.
Balancing a bake-off that’s heating up with a frosty reception from the board, Tricia stops by Joyce Whitman’s romance bookstore looking for a book to get her fired up. She stumbles on something hot, but it’s an argument between Joyce and her neighbor Vera Osborn instead of a steamy read. When Vera turns up dead in Joyce’s garden hours later, Tricia has to wonder—could Joyce be the killer? Or is the culprit still lurking in town?
One thing is for sure, someone in Stoneham is stirring up something more sinister than sweet. Tricia is determined to win the cutthroat cooking contest, but first she will have to make sure no one else is in danger of getting burned.
***
4.25 Stars
This is the thirteenth book in the Booktown mystery series by Lorna Barrett.
Tricia Miles has one of the many bookshops located in Booktown. Her vintage mystery shop called Haven’t Got A Clue is doing well and she has made her assistant Pixie more of a general manager while she has time to do other more relaxing things … like entering a amateur baking contest and of course, solving the newest murder in town!
While visiting a fellow bookstore owner to learn about gardening and planting an herb garden Tricia and Joyce find the dead body of Vera Osborn. Vera is Joyce’s next door neighbor and neither have gotten along with each other since the day Joyce moved in. Vera is found dead with a pitchfork jutting through her body which seems like a pretty extreme weapon to just have hanging around waiting to use for a murder. Joyce immediately jumps up to suspect number one.
There was barely any help in the investigation from one time flame, Chief Grant Baker and Marshall Cambridge, owner of the Armchair Tourist bookshop. Both linked romantically to Tricia at one time. Not to mention there was barely any interaction between Tricia and either of these men. I wish they had been more included in the story. I think it would have made a richer product in the end.
The story came to a satisfying end but I wasn’t jumping up and down about it. I felt like Tricia was left out in the cold a lot by people who said they cared about her. Her sometimes flame Marshall barely acknowledged her and her sister was so clueless that she named her new day spa in the same fashion as Tricia’s bookstore. I fear neither of them would have noticed if she had gone missing or for heaven’s sake, abducted.
Good story but I wanted more. Gimme some romance in this, please. Just a touch. Something. Keep me coming back to Booktown.
I received this as an ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) in return for an honest review. I thank NetGalley, the publisher and the author for allowing me to read this title.
No comments:
Post a Comment