Little Bookshop of Murder by Maggie Blackburn

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.

 

Series: Beach Reads Mystery #1 | Publisher: Crooked Lane Books |Release Date: 9/8/2020 | Genre: Cozy Mystery  | Source: Publisher | Rating: 3.5 Cups



 

Another day, another cozy mystery. I was eager to read this one because it was centered around a bookshop, but it had it issues.

 

Here’s a quick recap: Summer returns home after her mother’s death only to discover there’s more to it than natural causes. When she starts receiving threatening letters regarding the bookshop she’s inherited, Summer (with the help of her aunt and cousin) starts digging into her mother’s death.

 

I’m not sure if this one had teething problems because it’s the first in the series or if Summer’s just going to be one of those characters that I don’t enjoy. She was definitely not my favorite and was a bit grating at times. She’s a Shakespeare professor, so she deems only classic literature worthy of reading and looks down her nose on those who enjoy anything thing else but seems to have a particular intolerance of romance readers. I didn’t care for her attitude. Then there’s her phobia, which seemed a little over the top.

 

The mystery was a bit predictable. While there were a few red herrings thrown in, I just didn’t feel like they offered enough of a distraction to actually throw me off the killer. With that being said, I still found the mystery intriguing and wanted to see how things unraveled.

 

What kept me reading this book were the secondary characters. Agatha (Summer’s aunt), Piper (Summer’s cousin), and Piper’s daughter really kept this book enjoyable for me and made me want to finish. They were likable and livened things up.

 

Overall, I liked this one, I didn’t love it. Because this is the first in a series, I will give the next book a chance to see if things have improved. Had Summer not been such a book snob, this would have been more of a solid read for me.