Excellent start to a new series, with lots of twists and turns to throw you off the trail. I really liked Jenna and love the small town of Hokes Folly (I'd love to go stay at that inn!). There was plenty going on in this book, between Jenna's troubles in Charlotte to finding her uncle dead and inheriting the bookstore to a man trying to usurp her inheritance and then winding up dead himself and it kept the pace moving quickly. The plot was very well done, I went back and forth between suspects throughout the book, so the ending was a bit of a suprise, but satisfying.

My only minus to this story is Sutter. I feel like the whole "bad cop" trope in cozy mysteries has been done to death; as a device to add tension to a story, all it manages to do is annoy me so much, I start flipping pages. And really Jenna, if you've already been falsely accused and arrested for a serious crime once, wouldn't you realize that talking to a hostile detective without a lawyer present isn't a good idea? And it takes her what, 3 times to do it? *sigh* Get it together, Jenna!


Overall, an excellent start to a new series and I look forward to reading more from Jenna and Hokes Folly.