Author: Karen MacInerney
Published: December 26th 2022 by Gray Whale Press
Format: Kindle, 219 Pages
Genre: Amateur Sleuth
Series: Snug Harbor #3
First Sentence: There is nothing more perfect than a Maine summer day, when the sun is bright in the sky, the water is the color of cobalt, and the breeze is perfumed with the scent of salt air tinged with roses.
Blurb: Bookstore owner Max Sayers of Seaside Cottage Books is starting to settle into Snug Harbor, Maine when a local playboy plunges to his death... and Max's best friend Denise is on the hotseat for murder. Denise is an obvious prime suspect—the dead man just nabbed the coffee house she'd been planning to buy for years right out from under her—and Max seems to be the only one in Snug Harbor who believes her friend isn't Maine's answer to Lizzie Borden.
To top things off, business at Seaside Cottage Books is not exactly putting the store at the top of the Snug Harbor bestseller list. Add in a challenging ex-husband, a mother who's fangirl crushing on her ex's new girlfriend, and a daughter who's boycotting the bookseller's own budding romance, and Max finds herself wishing she were buried in a book instead of a real-life murder mystery. Then Max stumbles across a second body... and realizes if she doesn't think fast, this new chapter of her life may come to a very sudden end.
My Opinion: I was hoping that Karen MacInerney would have hired an editor by now, but sadly, that is not the case. There are continuity issues that have the reader paging back and forth, wondering if they missed something or if it is just another case of the author/editor not remembering the details mentioned previously.
It is refreshing to find an amateur sleuth not being a step ahead of the local detective boyfriend. Not that Snug Harbor is large enough for one, but there is no back-and-forth bickering and threats between the two characters.
Is the perpetrator easy to identify early on? You will have your suspicions, but there is no definitive proof until the confession.
Overall, it is not a bad book, though there are a few annoying things -- flow interruptions, teenage angst, wondering if the author researched or just went with her gut to get the narrative where she needed it to go, etc. Are they forgivable? Since this is a cozy mystery, I think I should be more accepting.
Blurb: Bookstore owner Max Sayers of Seaside Cottage Books is starting to settle into Snug Harbor, Maine when a local playboy plunges to his death... and Max's best friend Denise is on the hotseat for murder. Denise is an obvious prime suspect—the dead man just nabbed the coffee house she'd been planning to buy for years right out from under her—and Max seems to be the only one in Snug Harbor who believes her friend isn't Maine's answer to Lizzie Borden.
To top things off, business at Seaside Cottage Books is not exactly putting the store at the top of the Snug Harbor bestseller list. Add in a challenging ex-husband, a mother who's fangirl crushing on her ex's new girlfriend, and a daughter who's boycotting the bookseller's own budding romance, and Max finds herself wishing she were buried in a book instead of a real-life murder mystery. Then Max stumbles across a second body... and realizes if she doesn't think fast, this new chapter of her life may come to a very sudden end.
My Opinion: I was hoping that Karen MacInerney would have hired an editor by now, but sadly, that is not the case. There are continuity issues that have the reader paging back and forth, wondering if they missed something or if it is just another case of the author/editor not remembering the details mentioned previously.
It is refreshing to find an amateur sleuth not being a step ahead of the local detective boyfriend. Not that Snug Harbor is large enough for one, but there is no back-and-forth bickering and threats between the two characters.
Is the perpetrator easy to identify early on? You will have your suspicions, but there is no definitive proof until the confession.
Overall, it is not a bad book, though there are a few annoying things -- flow interruptions, teenage angst, wondering if the author researched or just went with her gut to get the narrative where she needed it to go, etc. Are they forgivable? Since this is a cozy mystery, I think I should be more accepting.
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