Genre: Mystery
Mass Market Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #: 9781496707512
Kensington Mystery
310 Pages
[Various Prices]; $6.89 Amazon
April 25, 2017
⭐⭐
When Sarah Winston's estranged brother Luke shows up on her doorstep, asking her not to tell anyone he's in town -- especially her ex, the chief of police -- the timing is strange, to say the least. Hours earlier, Sarah's latest garage sale was taped off as a crime scene following the discovering of a murdered Vietnam vet and his gravely injured wife -- her clients, the Spencers.
All Luke will tell Sarah is that he's undercover, investigating a story. Before she can learn more, he vanishes as suddenly as he appeared. Rummaging through his things for a clue to his whereabouts, Sarah comes upon a list of veterans and realizes that to find her brother, she'll have to figure out who killed Mr. Spencer. And all without telling her ex...
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Sarah Winston makes a living by running garage sales for other people. She's also the ex-wife of the current chief of police, CJ. So things get complicated when she's running a garage sale for an older couple and when someone pulls down a sheet to see what's under it, they find the battered body of Mr. Spencer, with his wife nearby, unconscious.
Then, making everything more complicated is the sudden appearance of her younger brother, Luke, whom she hasn't heard from in years. When he arrives bedraggled and tired at her door, she can't turn him away. But she finds herself having to keep his appearance a secret from CJ, and while she wants to know why Luke is there, she doesn't want to drive him away by asking too many questions. Then, when he's suspected in Mr. Spencer's death, she needs to clear his name...
I really wanted to like this book, and I liked the part about her brother coming back. But, unfortunately, I didn't. I was disappointed in the mystery surrounding Luke, and I didn't see why he needed to leave to do what he does. With the advent of the Internet, he could have used it to his advantage and kept a home base near Sarah. But he didn't.
Then, CJ makes a major decision about the future of himself and his life with Sarah -- without even consulting her. But he didn't. He just expected her to jump at it without question. What a tool. I can't say that I like him anymore. Who makes a life decision without consulting their partner first?
Speaking of which, she used the reasoning that she "loves her job" which is setting up garage sales and running them. Really? She can't do this somewhere else? I always thought it was weird anyway why you'd hire someone to do that instead of doing it yourself and keeping all the money. How lazy are people? I also don't see how she can run a part-time business (living in Massachusetts, she sure can't run it in inclement weather and winter) and still have enough money to live on/ Is she only paying $100 a month for her apartment? She's never had a full-time job and will have no retirement whatsoever (unless she takes half of CJ's military retirement), but for some reason everyone in this town is having garage sales and paying someone else to run them; and if in reality there were that many garage sales, everyone's home would be filled with someone else's cast-offs.
Yet the worst was the ending -- I absolutely detest it when we're left with cliff-hangers. I call it "holding the reader hostage," because you have to buy the next book to find out what happens. This isn't television, where you can tune in the following week; and if a movie did that, you'd be ticked. So why do authors think it's okay to do this? I've stopped reading many authors because of this, and I'm not sure if I'll even read the next in the series, because what if it happens in the ensuing book? No thank you. Sorry, but the reasons above tempered my enjoyment of the book and I felt as if I'd wasted my time reading it.
https://www.amazon.com/Good-Sarah-Garage-Sale-Mystery/dp/1496707516/ref
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3262676037
More on Sherry Harris's Books: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/h/sherry-harris/
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