1.5* as I got annoyed near the end.

There’s a quick pace to this story. One moment Ginny is exploring the town of Moonstone Bay and follows her cat into a building, the next she’s renting shop space for a bakery. There’s not even time to introduce herself to the building’s owner. But she knows his name anyway.

As soon as Ginny leaves she starts to regret her decision to rent the place. More so the next morning, when she returns and finds a broken window.

Spoiler

When the glass is on the outside, the window was most likely broken from the inside. Just saying.

Inside she finds a dead body and a dead to the world Vince.

The sheriff arrives, arrests Vince and sends Ginny and Lois, the carpenter she had a meeting with, away until he has time to question them. Both women apperently have strong stomaches, because from the crime scene they go straight to the diner and order a meal. They don’t talk about the murder while they eat, which is a surprise because this is (A) a murder mystery and (B) just about the most exciting thing that has happened in Moonstone Bay in a decade.

Ginny believes Vince to be innocent of the murder. She’s talked to him for maybe 30 minutes, but she has the insta-hots for him, so that explains it.

Ginny annoys me, constantly claiming things don’t add up. Those are assumptions. As a lawyer I would expect her to be more careful about the language she uses. I’d rather she said: that doesn’t make sense to me. The moustach twirling town villain annoys me. The fact that some people don’t get a name annoys me. Beth’s son doesn’t get a name, not even when she talks about him. Alma’s mom is called Alma’s mom rather than Mrs Ramirez.

It annoys me there are two guns, but it is unclear from context which one they are talking about. An editor could have fixed that. An editor could have also fixed the repetition of actions: Lois climbing into the backseat and the next paragraph that action is mentioned again. Or when Vince and Ginny drive away from Alma’s mom’s house, but in the opening lines of the next chapter they haven’t even gotten to the car yet and a moment later drive off again.

And the mystery could have been more fleshed out. It’s quite obvious where things are headed from the first time Alma’s name is mentioned.

I read an ARC through Booksirens.