Best fake relationship romance I've read since, well, ever.

I was rooting for Alexis to achieve her goals, not necessarily including finding a man. Her constant self-doubt (he can't possibly be interested in me) made me weary at times. (Blast woman, will you stop to have a look?)

And I didn't hate the epilogue. That's probably a first.

I read an ARC through NetGalley.

By page 56 I was ready to toss this book in the fire. But while half of Europe seems to be currently on fire, I found myself not in reach of a convenient open fire. I read on and luckily the story toned down on the mysogynistic comments from men.

When her old mentor, Abraham, is killed, Brooklyn is asked to finish the job he started. Which seemed a little odd. She found the body and there are rumours she killed him. Wouldn’t the owners want to know for sure their new bookbinder didn’t kill the previous one?

Anyway, the job is to restore an early (probably first, in cozies only first editions are special) edition of Faust. The edition is said to be cursed. Many of its previous owners have died shortly after taking possession of the book. Brooklyn doesn’t believe in any such curse, but she would like to know who killed her mentor.

There is some sort of investigation, as in, Brooklyn trespasses a few homes and rifles through other people’s stuff. But this killer does this too, so that’s okay. Or whatever. And though Brooklyn’s investigation does not involve listing, let alone talking to possible suspects, this could be forgiven because the story has a good pace to it.

There are things to like about this book: it’s not tedious (there is a danger of that if the main character’s job is to dust pages), things are happening and it has a quirky tone.

There are also things I don’t like: the exchanges between Brooklyn and Derek (are they eight? It failed as repartee between adults); Brooklyn’s friend Robin.

Spoiler

When Robin and Brooklyn see Derek on a stake-out outside her apartment, Brooklyn remarks he is stalking her, and Robin claims that this is OK because he is good-looking.

Brooklyn mentions a couple of times she has two sisters. Their names are Savannah, China and London. And that kiss

Spoiler

when she was barely conscious

. Yuk, yuk, yuk.

And, oh yeah,

Spoiler

Brooklyn turned out to be too stupid to live when she decided to taunt a killer knowing full well this person had killed two people the past week.

But how else was the confrontation between Brooklyn and the killer going to come about?

This book would have been better if there had been less of the stupid.

Jaime Moore has to start life over after her divorce which left her with nothing but the skills she had learned during her marriage, and a house that needs a lot of TLC. Jaime’s first act of TLC is knock out a dry-wall wall to make more space in the dining room. Hidden behind the dry wall is a body.

It turns out to be the body of a local woman that went on holiday a few months earlier but was not seen since. Jamie, curious about how the woman ended up in her house and currently without a project because the police are treating the house as crime scene, sets out to do some mild snooping. As it turns out, quite a few people had had an argument with the woman shortly before her disappearance and any number of them had access to the house because they had the key or knew were the spare key was.

I liked the setting and Jaime’s job as a renovator. Though I’ve got to question some of her choices. She’s all about salvaging things and repurposing materials, but has no qualms about suggesting to a client to replace his gingerbread trim with PVC. (No matter how good the quality of the PVC, it’s going to look fake.) I also didn’t like the way her mom talked down to her like she was an eight-year-old that might forget about safety. If my mom questioned my professional skills like that I would have declined Christmas dinner. (There’s difference between worrying about your kid knowing that they are competent and giving off the vibe you worry because you think your kid is incompetent.)

I liked that Jaime had to go round to her different suspects a few times and learning new things each time. Constantly adding, dismissing and re-adding suspects. Though some of the conversations were oddly short, such as the first time she met McKenzie. She could have learned a few things from him about what Cilla was like.

I didn’t like the quick romance. Jaime just got out of a long relationship. No need for her to rush into a new relationship, yet everyone is pushing her towards her neighbour. Parts of the story I was hoping it turned out he was the murderer so the annoying instant-romance could be nipped in the bud.

One thing that was bugging me throughout this book is that Jaime was left with nothing in the divorce because of the prenup she signed, including she got nothing of the company she and her (ex-)husband built. (Prenups usually exclude property owned before the marriage, not property gained during the marriage.) At some point, the story states Jaime is thirty-two, and it is repeated many times she was married for fifteen years. That means she got married at 17. Which is possible in North-Carolina, but she would have needed her parents’ permission. But at 17 would her parents not also need to sign on the prenup? That is after all a major contract. So either her parents hadn’t paid attention when signing the prenup, or the prenup is void, and her divorce lawyer is even more incompetent than suggested by the story when in the divorce settlement negotiations he did not flick the document back across the table with the words “my client was under-age when she signed this”.

I can accept that Jaime does not know this, but many people she would have told about the prenup have college educations, they should know better.

The other option is that Jaime was 18 when she signed the prenup, but the author (and editor) doesn’t know that 18 + 15 = 33.

And there is one thing the story did not clear up:

Spoiler

why was Roger so adamant the dry-wall wall was “load bearing”? He’s a lawyer. What does he know about construction? Or was he aware of another reason the wall needed to stay in place? And if so: how?

I read an ARC through NetGalley.

3.5*

It was well-written and had a good flow. Chloe concerned herself with setting up her new business first and clearing her aunt’s name second. Though I was a little surprised that not once she considered that if her aunt and business partner was charged with murder she would not get a cannabis licence for her business. That would have made her investigations a little more urgent than family comes first.

Rounded down because I was missing a certain je ne sais quoi.

Sometimes the only reason to keep reading a book is because it is short. This was the case here, and I am sad to say the book was not mercifully short. It was a hard task to struggle through it.

Kalina owns a store for comics and games and takes some of her merchandise to the town's annual Solstice fair. At the fair one of the blue ribbon winners of the bake off dies after drinking some tea and Kalina decides to investigate. Why? I don't know. Perhaps because everyone immediately started telling her not to get involved. I mean, that can be annoying: if everyone assumes the worst from you when you haven't set a foot wrong.

So Kalina gets involved and bulldozers in on the investigation.

She conveniently finds herself across the street when the police search the house of the murder victim, from where she can read a note the police carry out in an evidence bag. And when she takes her nephew to the police station, the detective conveniently leaves a case file on his desk - in her presence - while he goes to fetch himself some coffee.

The plot is pretty straight forward: Kalina finds a clue, that leads here to investigate something new, where she finds another clue, and so on until she figures out who did the dirty deeds. When she has her suspect, the story slows down, which makes the book feel very unbalanced.

I kept hoping this was because there would be a twist at the end where it turned out the fiancée did it. After all, why did the murderer wait all these years to kill the victims in short succession? He should have done it at a leisurely pace.

It felt though there was a better book hidden in this story. Perhaps if the author had sat on the story for a few more years, written a few more after and then had gone back to this one, she could have delivered a much better mystery.

Too much cringe.

Molly Kimball and her mother Nina move to Cambridge, England to help out their aunt Violet in running her bookshop. The bookshop has been in the family for over 400 years, but it seems aunt Violet has forgotten to get with the times. The back-catalogue hasn’t been updated since the Great War.

Molly makes fast friends with Daisy who runs a tea room across the street and Kieran and Tim who run a bike shop or are builders or servers, the story is a bit unclear on that point.

A lot of things happen fast in this story. One evening plans for the bookshop are made to host events, the next morning a wall is knocked through to make an entrance to the backroom where those events will be hosted. With the help of Myrtle - an old friend - the first event is hosted two weeks later. At the end of which Myrtle is found in the backyard, stabbed to death with a knitting needle.

Aunt Violet is an easy suspect - it appears the knitting needle came from her knitting bag. Certain that her aunt - who she has know all of two weeks - cannot have committed this crime, Molly sets out to investigate.

Well, investigate. People seem to fall over themselves to present alternative suspects, motives and other clues to Molly.

It’s all too easy. Is it too much to ask to have a MC that has to struggle at least a little bit?

The only problem Molly seems to have is that she knows nothing of her mother’s background and family. This is an issue for her, otherwise she would not get so riled up by someone asking about it. And while, yes, it seems strange that Molly knows so little about her mother’s side of the family (considering how close she and her mother are), but such things do happen and a comment as “Maybe Americans don’t place the same importance on family as we Brits do.” is uncalled for. (And rather laughable since plenty of Brits still send their kids off to boarding school.)

And yet, I did not hate the book. At least not until the author thought it fit to explain the concept of advanced reader copies and gave Fiona the same nervous tick as Ruth earlier in the book.

Other reviewers have commented on the author’s need to explain British customs to the reader, but none have mentioned the cringe worthy dialogue that results from the author’s desire to show off her knowledge. When Molly tells Kieran a picture of her went viral, Kieran asks if it was on page three (enabling the author to explain page three photos). Please, dear author, if you want me to think sympathetically of your MC’s love interest do not have him ask “so were you ever topless in a national newspaper?” Particularly not on a first date.

I wish there was less focus on a knitting needle as a murder weapon, ‘cause every time it was mentioned my mind fluttered off to the thought how unlikely a knitting needle is as a murder weapon: it has a blunt point, is relatively thin. You’d probably need considerable force to pierce the skin with one. Particularly, if you have to go through several layers of clothing, including a (thick winter)coat.

The scene where the murderer confesses is laughable. And of course, the missing will is found. Tidy Tom had used it as a bookmark.

That was the last cringe.

Lady Eleanor Swift is delightful and clever. I was sure she would figure out who was the jewel thief and the killer.

Spoiler

I'm actually slightly disappointed she didn't until she was facing off with the killer.