Caroline Fardig

I've stuck with this four book series since the beginning and am enjoying each one. This is the best yet. Juliet now has her PI license, which means she's getting some training and has a reason to be investigating crimes. But she still manages to get her personal life twisted up into the mysteries and that complicates things in entertaining ways. This is a cozy mystery story, after all.

The writing is light and airy and smooth. The characters are likable, the situations are mostly believable and the mysteries are intriguing.

Disclosure: Thank you to Netgalley and Alibi/Random House for providing a free copy of this book in return for my honest review.… (mer)

The first half of this book was a bit too slow and chatty for my taste. The mystery is about a death that happened thirty years before the book opens. Because the characters have a lot of catching up to do, they spend a lot of time catching up instead of getting things done. When enough suspects finally get lined up things start happening and the second half of the book feels more like the kind of book I like to read. The mystery does come together and is played very fairly and makes for a satisfying ending. Readers looking for a talkative mystery of Southern manners and murder should enjoy this book.

Disclosure: Thank you to Netgalley and Alibi/Random House for providing a free copy of this book in return for my honest review.… (mer)

I'm three books into this entertaining series and still not regretting it, even though I'm a guy. The writing is light and airy and smooth. The characters are likable, the situations are mostly believable and the mysteries are intriguing. This time around there is a higher body count and fewer clues and suspects than ever before. There is also more trouble for the first-person narrator, Juliet, and more complications to her love life.

It's not rewarding to overthink the motivations and actions of amateur sleuths in this sort of book. You have to suspend your disbelief and you want them to get involved and push the story along. In retrospect, though, Juliet might go a step too far in a couple of cases, including breaking and entering a crime scene and interrogating suspects. It wasn't enough to knock me out of the story, though. I did struggle a bit with the plethora of characters and names to keep track of. And the extended sequences of searching for a missing person could have had a better payoff in how it explored the City of Nashville.

On the whole, I can recommend this book to fans of cozy mysteries.


Disclosure: Thank you to Netgalley and Alibi/Random House for providing a free copy of this book in return for my honest review.… (mer)