[I received an electronic review copy of this book from Netgalley and Crooked Lane Books. All opinions are my own.]
Summary
Shelby Cox is helping run her aunt’s book store branch at Blye Castle while her aunt recovers from surgery. It’s a nice change of pace from her job in publishing. And now that she’s back in the town where she was born, she hopes she can learn some things about her mother who died when Shelby was three.
Shelby’s run in with Loreena Swan was pretty mild. Loreena, curator of the exhibits at the castle, seemed to think she should be in charge of everything. When Loreena tried to get heavy handed about the book store, Shelby firmly put her in her place. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t spooked when she finds Loreena dead.
Shelby is eager to see the crime solved, especially since she found the body. The local police chief has a history with her aunt Edie and seems to have Edie’s friend Matthew in her sights as her main suspect. Edie begs Shelby to look into things to protect Matthew. But the more questions Shelby asks, the more she seems to be the one who will need protecting.
Review
I have mixed feelings on this one. In general I liked Shelby and the other characters, and the mystery is solid. The castle setting is fun and different, and I like the book store angle.
My first struggle was to believe that any of the mystery was urgent. Loreena’s death happens early on and no ones seems to have very strong feelings about her or reactions to the death. Sure, it’s a crime so it needs to be solved, but there’s no urgency. I know Shelby wants to help her aunt’s “friend,” but that motivation still didn’t have any emotional punch to it. Even the police chief’s history with Aunt Edie, while described as contentious, was not really shown to be that way.
Then I was frustrated with Shelby’s search for information on her mom. Everyone, especially Edie, stonewalls Shelby at every turn. And the questions she is asking are really no big deal on the surface. Why wouldn’t anyone just answer? And Shelby was passive and understanding every time that happened. She has every right to ask her questions, and she should have been furious that simple questions were dodged at every turn. Obviously people were hiding something, but Shelby didn’t seem to put that together and wasn’t nearly upset enough about that. This was another plot point that seemed to be missing the emotional stakes I expected.
Finally, there were several places in the story where I saw what I considered to be continuity errors like a character not mentioned in a scene or discussion, but mentioned in a list of suspects to question right after, as if connected to the discussion even though his name never came up. At another time, Shelby knows information that doesn’t actually come up until several chapters later. I know I was reading an early, uncorrected review copy, but usually continuity pieces like that have already been sorted out before the ARC is released. I trust the publisher has addressed these issues in the final copy of the book. Hopefully this is just a quirk of being an early reader.
There are a couple threads started in this book that would make for interesting stories later in the series. I’ll probably give this series another try when a second book is released to see how things develop both in the story and in the writing.