Author: Krista Davis
Genre: Mystery
Hardcover; Digital Book
ISBN #: 9781496732736
Kensington Publishing
304 Pages
$22.51; $12.99 Amazon
May 25, 2021
⭐⭐⭐⭐
With Old Town's DIY Home Decorating Festival in full swing, Sophie's swamped, juggling a bumper crop of artisans, antique dealers, and decorators for the busy street fair. Still, when her best friend Nina suddenly needs a ride from the airport, Sophie is happy to help...until she sees Nina disembarking in a state of disarray. It's obvious the trip to Portugal soured somewhere along the way. But after one of Nina's traveling companions turns up murdered the following day, Sophie knows something is truly rotten...
Though the crime scene is staged to look like an accident, Sophie isn't fooled and peels off to conduct her own investigation. Her only clue is a strange image the victim scratched into the soil before dying. Could it point to a cryptic killer in Old Town? A bitter adversary? Or a cursed artifact smuggled back from the trip? As the mystery grows, so does the body count, and if Sophie doesn't pluck the murderer soon, her best friend may be the next to fall...
✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽
Sophie is trying desperately to pull of the DIY Home Decorating Festival on her street. Her neighbors have gotten their tents ready and have started selling their wares and demonstrating how to create decorating items. In between she has to pick up her best friend Nina from the airport, but is stunned when Nina arrives without shoes and looking haggard. After getting a tale of woe from Nina, it's back to business for Sophie.
But when she visits another friend the next morning she finds the woman dead with a strange symbol carved into the soil beside her. After informing the police, Sophie finds herself in the middle of another murder investigation, this one closer to home and it involves more than one friend. But when Nina is targeted, Sophie knows she has to act quick or she'll lose her, too...
This is the fourteenth book in the series, and unfortunately I haven't read them in order, so some of the revelations in the book are a complete surprise to me. However, I do plan on going back and reading the rest of the series, because what's discovered doesn't spoil this book at all.
We again have Natasha whining every five minutes to Sophie for something, and while Sophie tunes her out, I certainly wish I could, too. I have never cared for the woman, but at least she's not uber-annoying in this book, which is a good thing. Actually, there are some funny moments with Natasha that she has no control over, and I did enjoy those.
There's also trouble in the festival, with the entrants complaining amongst themselves, and I am not going to detail that as this is a new book and I want people to enjoy reading it. And you should enjoy it, too. There's an awful lot going on, and a lot of people doing it, and poor Sophie is right in the middle of it again.
But there are some good things that occur, and that makes all of it worthwhile. I do still think that Sophie needs to get herself together, but that's a personal opinion and has no reflection on this book, which is very good indeed. I enjoyed it immensely, and the mystery was indeed something that wasn't discovered until very close to the end (although I did figure out the murderer before Sophie, so that's something in my favor!). When it all comes together, we get a few more surprises which are nice, and it gives us something to look forward to in the next book. Recommended.
More on Krista Davis's Books: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/d/krista-davis/
No comments:
Post a Comment