At the start of the book I was wondering if this was perhaps written by another author than the previous two books, the narrative flowed so well. But by the time the author (in the book) died, I changed my mind. Summer’s thoughts had become more than a little repetative.

Summer has invited romance author Lana Livingston to Beach Reads for a presentation on Valentine’s Day. Unfortunately, Summer can’t attend the presentation, because she sprained her ankle badly when she made a tumble down the stairs. A detective from Pittsburgh comes to her house to do a whereabouts check on Lana.

Like seriously, Pittsburgh police has the kind of resources they can send an officer out of state to check whether a suspect in a murder enquiry is staying at the place she said she’d be staying?

The detective makes Summer blush, because for some reason she gets a new love interest every story.

After the death of the author the detective returns to ask Summer some questions. And not even clever Mia says to him: “I thought you said you don’t have jurisdiction here.”
Well, lack of jurisdiction can be easily waved, as by the next day, the Pittsburgh detective seems to have become the lead detective in this North-Carolina murder case. He promptly arrests one of Summer’s friends.

It’s an odd murder mystery. For one, the victim didn’t appear on the page before she was killed. She was from out of town and there doesn’t seem to be anything or anyone that links her to St Brigid’s. Because people are most often killed by people that know them (in reality, but most definitely in cozies), this also makes for a distinct lack of suspects.

A good thing in this book is that Summer is a much nicer character. She’s far less a snob about good reading material and less judgemental in general. Strange thing, though she considers herself a feminist, she muses a few times that her mother was alone until the day she died. It seems Summer has forgotten about the heaps and heaps of friends Hildy had, but only focused on the fact her mother did not have a romantic partner.

Worse probably is that when Summer receives a box of roses both Agatha and Glads squeal. Squeal! Why does neither of them immediately bring up the fact that the sender stood in Summer’s kitchen and told her not to have her friend over while she was investigated for murder?

This book gives off the bad vibes that romantic interests should be prioritized over friends.

Not so good is that this book has many of the same flaws the previous books had, such as the already mentioned repetitiveness, scenes in which not much else happens than someone walks in says a few things and leaves again, inconsistancy of names Lana/Lena.

In all, I think this could have been a much tighter, if not shorter, story. I would have been much more invested in the story, and the reason for sleuthing, if we had been able to meet Lana before she was killed, if Gina and Tina had gotten more background rather than the walk-on parts they had. And maybe, just maybe, it would have been good to reveal what was troublesome about Glads’s past.

I read an ARC through NetGalley.