After loving book one in the Secret Staircase Mystery series in 2022, I was so excited to get back in to following Tempest, Ash, and Darius in the second installment.

Here Pandian takes the readers into a locked room mystery straight out of an Agatha Christie novel. Tempest and crew are with a customer's house celebrating a finished project with a séance, when Lavina's ex-husband lands on the table - dead. 

With a new detective in town, Ash is quickly arrested upon suspicion but Tempest will do anything to make sure her grandfather is innocent. With her grandmother in Scotland and her dad not answering his phone, it's up to Tempest and her friends to figure out who did it. 

I think this was a good take on the locked room mystery, it kept me guessing who did it until it was revealed. However, something really took me out of the story and it took me much longer to read it than it should have. 

Just as in book one, there is still mention of the disappearance of Tempest's mother, Emma. Now suddenly her grandmother may still be investigating it and a draft of a new novel basically points to the Tempest's dad being behind the disappearance. I found this plot line popped up at the worst times in book two and took me out of the plot. It felt like it was just thrown in instead of woven and it didn't work well.

I'm interested to see where the story with Emma goes from here, but I hope it's woven in better in future installments.