A Dark and Stormy Murder (A Writer's Apprentice Mystery #1)

Author:  Julia Buckley
Genre:   Mystery

Mass Market Paperback; Audio CD; Digital Book
ISBN #:  9780425282601; 9781977353177
Berkley Publishing
304 Pages
$7.99; $22.81; $7.99 Amazon
July 5, 2016

⭐

Camilla Graham's bestselling suspense novels inspired Lena London to become a writer, so when she lands a job as Camilla's new assistant, she can't believe her luck.  Not only will she help her idol craft an enchanting new mystery, she'll get to live rent-free in Camilla's gorgeous Gothic home in the quaint town of Blue Lake, Indiana.

But Lena's fortune soon changes for the worse.  First, she lands in the center of small-town gossip for befriending the local recluse.  Then, she stumbles across one thing that a Camilla Graham novel is never without - a dead body, found on her new boss's lakefront property.

Now, Lena must take a page out of one of Camilla's books to hunt down clues in a real crime that seems to be connected to the novelist's mysterious estate - before the killer writes them both out of the story for good...

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Lena London is a recent grad-school graduate with no job, no boyfriend, and nothing to look forward to.  That is, until her friend Allison calls her and tells her that Lena's idol, writer Camilla Graham, is in her knitting class and needs an assistant.  Lena is over the moon, and after a telephone interview with the author, is hired on the spot.

But Lena's not going to find it all peaches and cream.  She meets a reclusive, rude neighbor, and later on finds a dead body on the beach in front of Camilla's home.  Now she's stuck in the middle of a murder investigation and wondering what it is that makes the neighbor so attractive to her.  But will she find out before the killer finds her?...

I should have known right away about this book when the author (no offense intended) mentioned she loved Mary Stewart books.  Mary Stewart, for those who do not know, wrote Gothic mysteries.  To wit:  a young, innocent woman stumbles into suspense and terror, and there is always a dark, brooding stranger that's hiding secrets but turns out to be 'the one' when All Is Discovered.

So...this is just like that.  The 'dark, brooding stranger' turns out to be Sam West, who may or may not be married because his wife just...disappeared, and everyone in town (including the hunky Chief of Police) think he's guilty.  So of course, Lena decides that romance with Sam would be so much better than the upstanding, cute, loyal, Doug.  Why would you even get involved with someone who might still have a wife somewhere?  Lena is stupid.

Not to mention, Sam was extremely rude to her when they met.  That's his personality.  If a man has it in him to be nasty to a perfect stranger (regardless of his past) then who's to say he's not going to snap at you at some point in the future?  No thanks.  I also didn't like Sam at all.  Doug seemed so much nicer, and more realistic.

Unfortunately, I lost interest in the book right about the time Lena is having breakfast in a crowded cafe and Sam, seeing she's alone, just goes over to her table and sits with her, knowing how the town feels about him.  For some reason he doesn't care that she's new in town, and association with him could taint her with the same brush (if these people are that nasty, they would think the worst of her, too).

Also, why were people calling everyone else by their first and last names?  Did the author need the word count?  It got annoying fast.  Since there was only one Sam and one Lena, did she think we’d get them confused with other characters?  One can only hope Sam’s wife comes back and they move somewhere else, but I don’t think so.  I’m honestly sorry I even started this book.  There’s two hours of my life I’ll never get back.  

But the worst part was - this is the first in the series and the author ends on a cliffhanger!  Or as I call it, holding the reader hostage.  It’s as if authors think they won’t sell the second in the series if they don’t do this.  This isn’t a TV show where you can see what happens next week - it’s a freaking book, and you might have to wait a year to see what happens.  Then, what’s to stop the author from doing it in the next book?  Or the next?  Nope.  I not only won’t read any more in this series, I won’t read any of the author’s other series, either.  Once you pull the 'you-have-to-buy-the-next-book-to-find-out-what-happens' at the end of a book, you’ve lost this reader for good.

Luckily, I don’t care enough about the characters to even care what happens to them.  Lena's an immature idiot (throwing nuts at Doug because she's upset?); Sam's boring and too broody, Camilla's only there as a plot point, and the poor cat Lestrade is just there - Lena spends very little time with him, and he has practically no reason to be in the book at all.  The only one remotely interesting is Doug, who's halfway intelligent, and Lena’s too dumb to figure it out.

https://www.amazon.com/Stormy-Murder-Writers-Apprentice-Mystery/dp/0425282600/ref

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2873042271

More on Julia Buckley's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/b/julia-buckley/