Already the tenth in the series, but my first. It was easy to step in to; any required background knowledge was explained along the way (and not in a big info dump at the beginning).

I like Gemma, though I feel she treats Jayne more as her assistant than as her friend. Jayne doesn’t seem to notice or care though.

I don’t care much for Donald. He’s constantly causually throwing Gemma under the bus.

“As I’m sure Ryan and Henry can tell us, ex-spouses are often the most likely suspects,” Donald added helpfully, “and for good reason.”

And for that matter, can we put that myth to bed already? When a woman is killed, the most likely suspect is a husband or boyfriend. When a man is killed, it’s most likely a criminal business contact. (Of course authors needed to use more variety concerning murder victims and their killers, but it would be nice if characters didn’t keep repeating the same nonsense.)

The book feels well researched, though I think the text painted on the street says “look right” rather than left (unless it was a one way street or they were halfway across the street already), because traffic is coming from the right first.

I read an arc through NetGalley.

Enjoyable.

Lou Tatcher just started her own business giving ghost tours, which is a really good job for her because she can actually see ghosts. A competitor threatens to put her out of business and when she stumbles over his dead body, Lou is considered a suspect.

So Lou decides to investigate herself, with the help of Adam (who didn’t see who killed him and also doesn’t think he has enemies) she talkes to a few living and dead people. All the while nursing the crush she has on the lead detective.

Spoiler

I’m so glad Lou in the end did realize she should move on.

Lots of interesting characters and I hope to see a few of the ghosts again in the next mystery.

I read an ARC through NetGalley.

I’ve skipped a few in this series, but enjoyable as a stand alone. The run up to the murder was long, but it pulled me more into the story than the actual murder investigation. There are some good twists in the story, but in the end, I felt it was all a bit much.

My issues with that are more to do with the genre than with this story itself. People get accussed of murder with the flimsiest of motive:

Lindsey has a viable motive, which is basically everything from Vivi banning Welly from the lighthouse, to hitting on Rory, to not showing up for the Lemonberry Tea Party.

These are all reasons to be annoyed with a person, irritated at best. To be glad they are leaving in a day or two and never to invite them back again. Surely it takes a bit more to envoke a murderous rage.

Same with people jumping to conclusions or claiming they don’t believe something someone said. I never like people who take short-cuts in their reasoning and fail to entertain alternative possibilities. (making up the alternatives is what makes mysteries fun.)

She hated dogs, right? So why would she give two million dollars of her estate to the RSPCA,

Perhaps because she liked other animals than dogs? It really is not as strange as you suggest it is.

That said, when someone entertains the possibility someone is lying, for instance the wife when she claims to not know about the will of her husband’s mistress, I want to know why you think that, because in most cases wives and mistresses don’t share confidences.

But mostly my issue is how freely the police and forensic examiner share information with the general public. Sure one of them has a nack for uncovering the truth, but even if that has scored her some brownie points with the police, that doesnot go for her family and assortment of friends.

I read an ARC through NetGalley.

Queer adventure novel.

Much emphasis on queer.

Characters spend a lot of time in the first few chapters recalling events of the previous book where they were nearly killed. Made me think there were going to be many more of those events in this book. I’m not much of a fan of that sort of edge of my seat reading.

I received an ARC through NetGalley.

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.

Very enjoyable. Made me laugh out loud many times.

The dad made me angry with his incistence Gwen was a quitter for wanting to leave a job that gave her no joy, only drained her. If he respect his daughter, he should respect her choices.

The cover is misguiding. The light yellow, the drawing: that’s all cozy. This story was not a cozy mystery. Far from it.

Discomforting. In most cozies the villanousness is over the top. Here it’s rather realistic. Which is not what I want from my escape literature.

Dispite the discomfort it was a good read.

One thing that annoyed me though, when discussing whether a person was likely to have committed a certain crime, all the time the phrase ‘do you think I/he would be caoable of that?’ Where capable was used in the sense of ‘has the right motivation’ or ‘lacks basic morals’. Would have been nice if more variaty of phrase was used there. Or that once in a while capable in the sense of has the right knowhow or finances was used.

3.3 stars as the author hid an important clue.

On a Saturday in May Issy Castillo is writing a letter of recommendation for a student. She only started the job earlier that month so can’t know the student very well. In any case, she hasn’t learned to set boundaries yet. She gets a phone call from a department friend to meet up for a bite to eat. When she gets to his office, she finds him lying on the floor. Three other people stop at the office — why are all these people at the faculty building on a Saturday? — and immediately start accussing Issy of murder. Without making the slightest attempt at finding out what is going on.

The story then moves back a few weeks to when Issy first arrived at the department. Several people are openly hostile towards her and she assigned an office in the basement — rather than given the office of her predecessor. The atmosophere in the department is decidedly toxic. At a party departmental reorganisation (including laying off people) is discussed and Issy finds two dead scorpions tacked to her door (which she doesn’t report to the department.)
This glimpse into the past shows there are many people with a grudge against Eddy, the soon to be victim.

I wanted to like this story, but I didn’t. The writing is on the one hand simplistic and many characters are characatures. On the other too much attention is given to detail when describing action or scenes. At one point, Eddy and Issy are talking in the car and after every few sentences of dialogue there is some desciption of car driving action or leaving the car and continue to walk. In that scene a conversation that can’t have been more than a minute is stretched out over ten. That just reads awkward: must I imagine the two characters have really long pauses between eveything they say?

I also didn’t particularly care for the scenes with Doña Isabella. She died long before New Mexico joined the federation, yet speaks modern slang; she could have chosen any embodiment, yet prefers to be an old woman. I can only think this is to keep with the wise old woman characature.

The author may concider getting a sensitivity reader to prevent being unintentionally offensive.

I read an ARC through NetGalley.

Tips on improving your submission and manuscript (though probably best to start with the latter).

Too bad all the examples of good writing came from her own work. That's probably a rights issue though perhaps lazy research.

Communicatiestijlen worden ingedeeld op de assen "ruimte gevend-ruimte nemend" en "inhoudend-uitend". Deze zijn herkenbaar. Van mezelf en verschillende mensen waar ik vaak mee in vergadering zit de hoofd- en substijlen weten te bepalen.

Vervolgens wordt getoond hoe ieder van deze stijlen met anderen communiceert en in spraakverwarringen en conflicten verstrikt raakt. Sluit af met tips hoe de angel uit conflicten te halen. Dit nog niet toegepast, maar een eerste stap zou zijn dat ik me in een conflict niet meer in de emotie van de ander laat meeslepen.