Genre: Mystery
Mass Market Paperback; [Audio CD]; Digital Book
ISBN #: 9781496723031; [9781662017599]
Kensington Publishing; [Dreamscape Media]
320 Pages
$7.99; [$22.99]; $6.89 Amazon
July 28, 2020
⭐⭐⭐⭐
With Chicago winters in the rearview mirror, Chloe Jackson is making good on a promise: help her late friend's grandmother run the Sea Glass Saloon in the Florida Panhandle. To Chloe's surprise, feisty Vivi Slidell isn't the frail retiree Chloe expects. Nor is Emerald Cove. It's less a sleepy fishing village than a panhandle hotspot overrun with land developers and tourists. But it's a Sea Glass regular who's mysteriously crossed the cranky Vivi. When their bitter argument comes to a head and he's found dead behind the bar, guess who's the number one suspect?
In trying to clear Vivi's name, Chloe discovers the old woman isn't the only one in Emerald Cove with secrets. Under the laidback attitude, sparkling white beaches, and small town ways something terrible is brewing. And the sure way a killer can keep those secrets bottled up is to finish off one murder with a double shot: aimed at Chloe and Vivi.
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Chloe Jackson went to Florida for the funeral of her best friend Boone, who was killed in Afghanistan. He made her promise if anything happened to him that she would stay and help his grandmother Vivi run her bar, the Sea Glass Saloon. But Chloe finds out that Vivi is perfectly capable of running the bar on her own, yet her promise to Boone is important, so with her leave of absence from her job in Chicago, she makes up an excuse to get a job at the Saloon, and is now their waitress. It's also apparent that Vivi doesn't really care for Chloe and doesn't trust her; but at the urging of the bartender Joaquin she allows her to stay.
At first, Chloe's been sleeping in her car but now while spending the night on Boone's boat, she's discovered by a local named Rhett, who promises to keep her secret. The next morning, while running on the beach, Chloe discovers the body of a local man who's been murdered. With Vivi as the main suspect, she knows the woman didn't do it and wants to find the killer.
But there's more in store for Chloe, and she's in for a big surprise of her own, along with surprises from the locals that keep her on her toes...and running from a killer...
This is the first book in a new series, and I must say that in the beginning I almost put it down and walked away. It began that slowly, and I didn't get the fact that she'd been sleeping in her car for days yet went to work and no one noticed the 'human scent' that must have been there, and I began wondering where she was changing her clothes and showering. But I continued on, and then the story line began to grab me, and I kept reading to the end (as I've said often, I pay attention to details, and these are details that bothered me).
After I started to get into the story, I enjoyed it quite a bit. You have a twenty-eight year old woman from Chicago who's found herself in strange waters in Florida, trying to fulfill the wish of her deceased best friend without his grandmother knowing about it. I do like Chloe quite a bit, even if she does take risks she shouldn't, but not so many of them that I'd call her stupid.
Vivi is another story. I don't get why she's cranky at all: she has a thriving business and plenty of money, so she pretty much has the freedom to live the way she wants. What's to be cranky about? You'd think she'd have a nicer personality, but I guess we'll see in future books if she's warmed up at all as a person.
Watching Chloe try to figure out who killed the man brings her in contact with many of the locals, and they're starting to warm up to Chloe while spilling their own pasts to help her in her quest to help Vivi. It seems everyone likes the woman and no one believes she's guilty. When the stakes are raised and Chloe becomes a target of the killer, she knows she must be getting closer to the truth. When it finally dawns on her who the killer must be, she ignore the danger to herself to help the woman.
It's an interesting climax and I do like how the story played out. I enjoyed this one so much that I look forward to the next in the series. Recommended.
More on Sherry Harris's Books: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/h/sherry-harris/
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