One of the last of the reviews I have to make up from Netgalley

I can't believe this is the third book in this series already, seems like only yesterday Abi showed up to take over her uncle's whisky distillery. In this book, Abi and the distillery gang heads to a whisky competition and on the first night, a competition judge turns up dead, poisoned. As Abi races to discover how is behind the poisoning, another judge is found dead, also by poisoning. As she closes in on the killer, her partner Grant is poisoned after borrowing Abi's toothpaste and is hospitalized. There was no shortage of suspects in this one, most of whom had their own interrelated paths that wove a tangled web into the investigation. Bit by bit, Abi untangled the knots but not before two men died and her business partner (and romantic interest) nearly died. I liked the police inspector, Michaelson, had more background added, making him more a part of the story than in the other books. The addition of Breanna, Grant's ex-girlfriend also added another layer and looks like she will be in further books.

The explosive ending was by far the best part. I had an inkling who the murderer was around halfway or two thirds through the book, and I wanted to smack Abi and tell her she was on the wrong track. Still, it was an exciting ending and a great cap to a great book.

I have one small complaint: No, you cannot go to the store and buy a bottle of vape juice and poison someone with it. Also, vape juice is not nicotine with flavoring added, there also PG (propylene glycol) and VG (vegetable glycerin) added. Nicotine is also already diluted when you buy it, usually with PG, but sometimes with VG and in varying concentrations. With all the hoopla in the news lately about how "vaping is killing people" it isn't and considering how many people have stopped smoking cigarettes with vaping (I'm one of them) I hate to see misinformation being spread. It's bad enough in the media, but I've read a couple of books with this as a plot device and it's unacceptable.

1989: A famous TV star visits the tiny Maine town Heart's Harbor and disappears. Did she really want to escape to a new life or did something more sinister happen? 30 years pass and Callie is looking through newspaper archives with Quinn, a new friend, when he shows her newspaper clippings of the disappearance. Callie takes up the mystery, visiting the local newspaper editor who later turns up dead. With two cases to investigate, Cassie once again teams up with Falk to solve the mysteries.

This is a cute, fun series and I enjoyed the intriguing mystery of the missing TV star. There wasn't much investigation, per se (how much can you investigate a 30 year old mystery?) so it was mostly Callie's uncovering what she could and putting the pieces together. Lots of surprising twists and turns kept it interesting, and the exciting ending capped it all off with a bang. A great addition to this series and I look forward to more.

Another strong entry in a great series! The Inn at Holiday Bay is hosting a writers' retreat and there's a merry cast of aspiring authors, led by Dax Sherman. Abby has a strong attraction to him and is reluctant to see him again but sucks it up. But the mystery -ahhh, a juicy mystery! - during a break in a poker game, a man is found stabbed to death and none of the other people at the game saw it happen - or what anyone else was doing during the break. Dax was at the game and is one of the top suspects after it's revealed that not only did he know the victm, he also had a motive to see him dead. There was a lot for Sheriff Colt Wilder to untangle and Abby is there to wade through the alibis to find the killer. Colt and Abby make a good team, and while I think it's unlikely that a sheriff would be so forthcoming about the facts of an investigation, I'm willing to look past that. Abby is great at coming up with some pretty far fetched theories and suprisingly, is frequently correct.

This one was focused solely on the mystery and less about the other characters and their issues and I liked that. The last couple of books had a lot of relationship angst, but it served to move the characters forward and this book had some progress made in a few areas. I also liked the writers at the retreat, and I'd LOVE to read the time traveling nun story!

Overall, a great, entertaining read in a series I'd expect nothing less.

I remember when I read the last book in this series, The Chalmers Case, that I felt it lacked focus and rambled a lot. I'm happy to say this one was a lot better; just one main mystery and one small mystery, all told succinctly and without filler. And that's what I enjoy about this series; the fact that a well-written mystery doesn't need a dead body, a lot of characters and and an excess of plot threads.

This is a cute little novella length series. I enjoy the characters, the pizza descriptions and the plots are always interesting and novel. The only reason why I don't rate these books higher is because they read almost like a rough draft. There's a lot of detail about the mundanity of Ellie's life, but very little detail in the plot itself, and the endings are usually very abrupt. Granted, the books aren't very long, but I've read books that achieve the balance between a full plot and novella length so I know it can be done.

Overall, this is a cute series and an enjoyable, quick read but would be so much better with a little work.

I've read this series since the beginning and I love how the world of Llanelen and the characters have grown and expanded as the series progressed. In this one, Penny is tasked with preparing an elegant old fashioned dinner party at the local estate, featuring a historic artifact - The Black Chair, an honorary award given to celebrated bards; this one was given to a poet who died in WWI and was posthumously awarded the chair. After being refurbished, it is set to become the feature attraction at a local museum, but not before being unveiled at the dinner party. The dinner party mostly goes off without a hitch until a waiter goes missing and is later found dead -and the chair is missing! Penny sets off to find out who killed the young man and to find the missing historic piece.

Penny is quite involved with this one, even to go so far as to take the ferry to Ireland to track down a suspect. She also has to deal with a caravan of gypsies who set up camp in a field next to her house, the re-appearance of Gareth, who is in town to settle some affairs, and several other small problems that crop up. I enjoyed watching Penny slowly untangle all the threads to expose a killer and a thief, and I love catching up with the villagers in the tiny Welsh town.

Always a good read, this is another excellent addition to the Penny Brannigan series.

Poor Fenella is feeling the burden of the millions of dollars she inherited resting on her shoulders. A year after she moved to the Isle of Man after her aunt died, charities on the island have begun their incessant requests for money. One such charity, run by Darrell Higgins monitors the local Wallaby population. Thinking Fenella will donate rather than volunteer, Higgins is surprised when Fenella signs up to take an hour on the next hunt.

The day of the hunt dawns cold and rainy and Fenella, along with police inspector Daniel, huddle in a wet field for their hour long shift before heading back to their car, but not before discovering Darrell dead, yeeted under a bush.

This was one of those books that had a boatload of suspects but it was apparent (to me anyway) who the culprit was, but that didn't diminish my enjoyment one bit. Darrell's ex-wives were a hoot, I'd love to spend an hour at the Tale & Tail listening to them. As always, the usual gang was there, Shelly immersed in writing her romance novel,  Mona the ghost, Katie the kitten's antics and even the dogs make a quick appearance. Always a good time to catch up with all of them. I thought for sure that Fenella was finally going to move forward with her romance with Daniel but it's becoming less of a tease and more of a chore with those two.

Overall, another enjoyable time on the Isle of Man and looking forward to the next book!