Author: Sharon Farrow
Genre: Mystery
Mass Market Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #: 9781496722614
Kensington Publishing
339 Pages
$7.99; $6.99 Amazon
August 27, 2019
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With the Harvest Health Fair in full swing, Marlee makes sure to stock up on elderberry products for cold and flu season. But this year there's also a run on mulberry when an eccentric customer wants to use the dried berries to ward off evil forces. True, it's almost Halloween, but something else seems to be spooking Leticia the Lake Lady, Oriole Point's oddest resident. She believes someone plans to kill her -- and the ghost. Only mulberries can protect them. Marlee doesn't take her fears seriously until a man named Felix Bonaventure arrives in the village, asking questions about a mysterious woman.
The next day, Marlee finds Bonaventure dead on Leticia's property -- shot through the heart with an arrow made of mulberry wood. And Leticia has disappeared. Marlee soon learns the Lake Lady has a deadly past that is connected to the famous Sable family who are in town for the health fair. A bunch of clues start to come together -- and figuring out what's going on puts Marlee in a real jam...
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Marlee Jacobs owns The Berry Basket, a shop in town that deals with all things having to do with berries, including bakery items which are created by her pastry chef, Theo. She's gearing up for the Harvest Health Fair -- organized by the mayor's wife Piper, who's also asked Marlee to give a speech at the fair about the health benefits of her berries. But more important, Piper has managed to snag the famous Sable family to give talks, who have a line of books and health items that have created an empire.
But then Marlee gets a strange visit from a local eccentric - Leticia the Lake Lady. She lives in the woods and rarely ventures out this far, but insists on meeting Marlee by the lighthouse. What she asks her seems odd - she wants Marlee to get her as many mulberries as she can to ward off the evil of the 'shadow people', telling her that she and the ghost are in danger. Even though Marlee doesn't understand, she agrees. But then a man enters her shop looking for Ellen Mulberry and tells her that his name is Felix Bonaventure. While Marlee isn't sure that Ellen and Leticia are the same woman, she wants to know. And when she delivers the berries to Leticia's house the next day she doesn't find Leticia, but she does find Felix...shot through the heart with a mulberry arrow.
Now Marlee needs to find Leticia and see if she killed Felix; but when she starts looking for answers, she only finds more questions. One that lead to a long-ago murder that may have to do with Leticia, and now that she's missing, Marlee finds herself in the middle of another murder investigation, and she might not come out alive from this one...
This is the fourth book in the series and is a very good one. Although a little more than a third way through the book I knew who the murderer was and, for the most part, the reason why (I read a lot of mysteries); it was still interesting to watch Marlee go through the stages of trying to figure everything out with a little help from her friends Andrew and Dean, brothers who work for her.
When Marlee finds out the connection she's warned away by more than one person, but when she discovers that an injustice was done, she knows that she needs to set things right, even if it causes her problems. But she doesn't realize what exactly she's walked into and when she starts to put it together she's warned away.
What I did like about the book this time is that Piper, who's normally concerned with only herself and what she thinks is best for the town, shows that she cares about Marlee in a strange twist later on in the story. It makes her more likable as a person, and what she did was a very nice thing to do. As for the other characters, in the same scene they also show that they care about Marlee, and it brings them all closer together. It was probably one of the best scenes in the book.
When the murderer was discovered, there was, of course, the scene where Marlee was in danger, but this time she was in a very heavy Halloween costume, so that could have caused problems for her, but in the end everything came out right even if there was sadness along the way. I look forward to the next in the series. Recommended.
More on Sharon Farrow's Books: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/f/sharon-farrow/
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