Little Bookshop of Murder
Series: A Beach Reads Mystery Book #1
Author: Maggie Blackburn
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books
Page Count: 332
My Rating:
Book Summary
A Shakespearean scholar inherits a beachside bookshop–and a murder mystery–in this delightful new cozy series for fans of Kate Carlisle and Ellery Adams.
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.
More Facts for Readers about our Sleuth:
Main Sleuth: Summer Merriweather (age 32)
Sidekicks: Piper (cousin), Agatha (aunt), Mia (niece)
Physical Description: Olive skinned female, curvy, brown eyes, black hair
Location: Brigid’s Island off coast of southern North Carolina (she’s lived in Staunton, Virginia)
Time of Year: Midsummer
Business: Shakespeare professor turned bookshop owner of “Beach Reads”
Pet: African grey parrot named Mr. Darcy (inherited from mom)
Love Interest: None. Although possibly Levi, the fire chief, in subsequent books
Family: Mom is deceased. Piper (cousin), Agatha (aunt), Mia (niece). Half brother Sam, Half sister Fatima
Cussing? Light, maybe only three times. Bastard, Sh*t
Diversity? There isn’t a ton in this first book. But Poppy, who helps run the bookshop is described as mocha skinned. And later, when we meet Summer’s siblings they have mocha skin as well. We gather from the context clues of the book that our main sleuth has a darker skinned Muslim father, and her mother is white, making her olive skin a blend of the two. I have a feeling we’ll get more clarity on this in subsequent books.
My Review
Sadly, I have to rate “Little Bookshop or Murder”, book 1 in the Beach Reads Mystery series by Maggie Blackburn, just 3 stars. We’re introduced to Summer Merriweather, a Shakespeare professor back in her home town after her mother’s passing wherein she’s reunited with family and the heir to her mother’s estate and bookstore. But her mother was much loved and very healthy, so her sudden death raises many questions and points to foul play. Summer is determined to find answers.
This book has everything I could want in a cozy mystery, and a lot of the traits that the mother (Hildy) has resonate with me personally. For example, I’m vegan, love animals, follow the Wheel of the Year in a coven with my older sister, and gravitate to the more ethereal. So many things were clicking for me and made reading this cozy very pleasant and enjoyable. The main problem with this cozy, and why I rated it lower than my average – is that I could clearly see who the murderer was at only 25% through the book.
Normally, I *think* I know who the killer is but have so many red herrings and reasonable doubts to contend with that I don’t *really* know the answer. But in this cozy, it was plainly obvious, which made me really sad. I did read the whole book in the hopes that maybe there would be a huge plot twist at the end, but it didn’t happen. The murder wasn’t buried in the mystery, and there was language used that clearly pointed to them and left little doubt. Again, I’m very sad to rate this lower. A lot of great thoughts are here. The setting is playful, the characters are engaging, and the mystery itself holds such promise. But then I knew the answer so early on.
There is one kind of creepy aspect to this cozy too. The main character is against romance books, but she ends up reading one and really enjoying it. She even has a sexy fantasy dream about the main male character from the romance book. At the end of the cozy she discovers that the male character is based on her actual dad. A little too… Oedipus (?) for me.
One other tiny thing… the main sleuth keeps referring to herself as being too old for certain things, and she refers to college students as “kids”. She’s only 32. I myself, am only 31 and we are not old – and I still feel like a high schooler most of the time. She has a TON of time to date, find a soulmate, experience life, adventure, etc. I wish she wasn’t so mentally aged in the prime of life.
