Little Bookshop of Murder: A Beach Reads Mystery by Maggie Blackburn
About Little Bookshop of Murder
Little Bookshop of Murder: A Beach Reads Mystery
A Shakespearean scholar inherits a beachside bookshop--and a murder mystery--in this delightful new cozy series for fans of Kate Carlisle and Ellery Adams.
Summer Merriweather's career as a Shakespeare professor hangs by a bookbinder's thread. Academic life at her Virginia university is a viper's pit, so Summer spends her summer in England, researching a scholarly paper that, with any luck, will finally get her published, impress the Dean, and save her job. But her English idyll ends when her mother, Hildy, shuffles off her mortal coil from an apparent heart attack.
Returning to Brigid's Island, NC, for the funeral, Summer is impatient to settle the estate, sell her mom's embarrassingly romance-themed bookstore, Beach Reads, and go home. But as she drops by Beach Reads, Summer finds threatening notes addressed to Hildy: "Sell the bookstore or die."
Clearly, something is rotten on Brigid's Island. What method is behind the madness? Was Hildy murdered? The police insist there's not enough evidence to launch a murder investigation. Instead, Summer and her Aunt Agatha screw their courage to the sticking place and start sleuthing, with the help of Hildy's beloved book club. But there are more suspects on Brigid's Island than are dreamt of in the Bard's darkest philosophizing. And if Summer can't find the villain, the town will be littered with a Shakespearean tragedy's worth of corpses--including her own.
What I Thought:
This is the first installment in the Beach Reads Series and I so wanted to love this book. I liked this book and I really liked the setting. I think a book store on the beach that sells beach reads would be an awesome place to visit. While I liked the setting, I did not like the main character very well. Summer returns to Brigid's Island for her mother's funeral. Summer is a little shell shocked over her mother's death and soon suspects foul play when she starts finding threatening letters for her mother to sell her store. Summer suspects the man who runs the arcade next door, but that is soon cleared up. Summer does not like her mother's book store because she hates romance novels and loves Shakespearean literature and hates romance novels. The idea of this story was a good one. The plot was well thought out. The author did a good job setting up for the next book. I will probably read more in this series because I liked the setting so well. The author did well describing the area. And in future novels, I hope Summer is not such a book snob.
I received a complimentary copy of this book.
About Maggie Blackburn
No comments:
Post a Comment