Little Bookshop of Murder (A Beach Reads Mystery #1)

Author:  Maggie Blackburn
Genre:   Mystery

Hardcover; Digital Book
ISBN #:  9781643854380
Crooked Lane Books
$21.04; $12.99 Amazon
July 7, 2020

⭐⭐

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.

✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽

Summer Merriweather has returned home to Brigid's Island for the funeral of her mother.  The two haven't spoken since Summer left her fiancee at the altar several years ago.  But she believes her mother, who was healthy in every way, was murdered, even if the police aren't listening to her.  They don't listen even when she finds threatening notes - "Sell the bookshop or die" - or when there's an attack on her.  So Summer, her Aunt Agatha, Agatha's daughter Piper and Piper's daughter Mia, set out to solve the murder themselves.  But will Summer find a killer before she's the next victim?...

I really wanted to like this book because I love books about books, but I was heavily disappointed.  I have to tell you (and anyone who knows me or has read my reviews already knows) I am a big believer in details.  I notice them.  I notice many things about books including little details that escape others, or things others don't really care about in the first place.  But what I noticed here isn't little, it's staring us in the face:  at the heart of this book, I'm seeing that it's supposed to be about feminists.  There isn't a single strong male in the book, nor, believe it or not, a single strong woman.  Having a PhD doesn't qualify as being strong; and the Shakespeare quotes throughout seemed just weird and out of place.  However, while all the main characters are women,  the men are either angry, stupid, inept, 'smelly', or practically non-existent.  This is just my opinion, although I do realize others might disagree, which is fine with me.

The women are also too 'trippy' for me.  Old hippies and flower children are not my idea of a fun or interesting cozy mystery.  Some women are supposed to be "free spirits" (of which I have no liking whatsoever in the first place) so perhaps this wasn't the best book for me to choose.  I also don't really care for books with witches.  I'm just not interested.  But back to the women - neither (the late) Hildy, Agatha, Piper, nor Summer have husbands nor are in relationships.  Not even Mia's father is in the picture.  What was the author's purpose in this?  That you can't be a strong woman if there's a man in your life?  While I don't like romance to take center stage in a cozy, I do like to see that the main character not only has a good mind for solving murders, but can handle other things in her life just as well (although the MC did tell us early on she couldn't handle relationships, so oh, well).

I likewise had a hard time believing Summer truly cared for her mother.  Sure, she shows anger at her mom's death, but she ran away from the town and never contacted her mother again?  That screams guilt, not love.  And we're supposed to feel sorry for her?  Not to mention the murderer was the easiest one to identify that I've ever come across.  The person practically screamed "I did it!" the minute they stepped onto the page.  (The author moreover needs to research before she writes things.  She states as how the African Grey Parrot, Mr. Darcy was “getting old,” but African Greys can live 40 to 60 years.  Nineteen is not old for them.)

The ending was a big disappointment; I think it may have been written to keep the reader interested enough to read the next in the series, and it didn't seem plausible why the killer was threatening Summer when the person had never even met her before.  So there was that.  But perhaps I'm just the wrong audience and hopefully many others will enjoy this book.

https://www.amazon.com/Little-Bookshop-Murder-Beach-Mystery/dp/1643854380/ref=

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3201846235

More on Maggie Blackburn's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/b/maggie-blackburn/