I love the cover. It’s not typical cozy, and yet it has some cozy elements in it.

I didn’t like the protagonist much. She has a business relationship with her father, which is the reason she refers to him by his first name. To me, that suggested a familiarity that the two of them don’t have. Her father is an agent to a few Hollywood stars and roped his daughter in as an assistant from an early age. As a result, Annie is a doormatt to Camille and Gray. Later someone mentions that Gray is like her little sister and while Annie turns to that idea, she doesn’t start to behave like a big sister, i.e. she doesn’t stand up to “her sister’s” bully (Camille), but rather keeps worrying about getting blamed by Camille when Gray doesn’t lose enough weight or dates the local cop.

There’s not much sleuthing. Annie suspects a few people, but her snooping consists of tapping into small town gossip. She’s more concerned with cleaning up the yarn room and setting up a tea room. A yarn shop/tea room, now there’s an idea that will only work in fiction. (Never mind that the previous owner apparently had a large empty space in her business.) The same with everyone being a tourist would fall in love with the place and buy it. Tourists generally already have lives and generally stick to just dreaming about buying property and opening a business in their favourite holiday destination.

The murder mystery is not much interesting. The victim died a year previously. The killer is obvious from the first time they visit the yarn shop.

The mystery fails to get exciting. Then someone confesses the murder, but in such an anti-climactic way, you know for sure it’s a set-up and someone else is responsible. Then it just seems silly Annie tries to convince us the killer has been found. Most peculiar, why is everyone in town buying into this confession now? Why aren’t there people doubting this person would ever confess to any crime?

The protagonist of course has a confrontation with the killer, but why did this murder even happen?

Spoiler

When Patty remade the penguin why did she not use the stuffing from the original penguin? What did she use as stuffing in stead?

Don’t like the reason Annie decides to stay. It would have been nice to see that she had finally grown a bit of a spine and chose her own happiness, but that’s not her reason.

I read an ARC through NetGalley.