It’s the first day of April and it’s also a Wednesday, so I’m back with the quick reviews from last month. This was an interesting one to pick – because there were quite a lot of books from last month that I want to write about, but a lot of them fit into other posts that I’ve got planned, but in the end it’s worked out ok – with three murder mysteries so it even feels a bit cohesive! The stats are coming up – but I think it’s fair to say that I did quite well on the to-read pile front and on the NetGalley one too, and this post reflects that: two books from NetGalley – both recent releases – and one from the pile.
A Murder in Eight Cocktails by Kelly Mullen*
Willa is a recent (early) retiree who has turned herself into an ASMR cocktail influencer. When she’s invited to the launch of a new bar, she’s excited to make content for her account – even if her husband is less than enthusiastic. But when she arrives at the even she discovers it’s being hosted by her ex-husband and things go from bad to worse when the owner of the bar is found dead on the rocks below the ocean-side bar. The police think it’s suicide, but Willa isn’t convinced, and soon she’s teaming up with her ex-husband and her current husband to try and figure out what really happened. I wanted to like this more than I did, but I found the way that Willa bounces between unhappiness with her husband’s “dullness” and enthusiasm for working with her ex-husband quite trying. I think the push-pull was meant to create tension in the story (beyond the murder mystery) but I thought it reduced the reader’s sympathy/empathy for Willa because she never really gives concrete examples of the problems in her marriage or tries to address them with her husband (she just seems to get exasperated) and is written in a way that suggests that she might jump ship to her ex. The mystery was interesting though – although I’m not sure about an emotional support chameleon…
The Pie and Mash Detective Agency by J D Brinkworth*
Jane Pye and Simon Mash are a couple who start taking a private detective class in their free time and end up investigating a real live case as part of their final assessment. A woman called Nellie Thorne has been reported missing by her boyfriend – except that she is not the first Nellie Thorne to go missing, there have been at least five of them over the last fifty years. Can these two wannabe PIs work out what has happened to all the Nellies? Ok, I’m not going to lie, this didn’t really work for me. I was hoping it would, but I found it quite hard going. There is some fun dialogue between Jane and Simon, but you never really got to know them that well – what their personalities are like and why they are a thing – beyond the snark. The mystery was quite convoluted and I felt like it couldn’t quite decide if it wanted to go all out into the surreal/fantastic or stay in the cozy crime lane. Hey ho, this happens – the cover is lovely though.
Fishing for Trouble by Elizabeth Logan
This is the second book in a cosy crime series set in Alaska. Charlie has taken over running her parents diner after moving home following a broken engagement in San Francisco. In this it’s high summer, with long days of daylight and lots of seasonal workers. But when one of those seasonal workers collapses and dies in her diner, Charlie starts to investigate. So this didn’t really work for me. Charlie doesn’t have a lot of personality beyond liking her cat (shown by buying him loads of cat toys she can run from her phone while she leaves him home alone all day) and being a bit immature as well as somewhat too stupid to live. It’s a shame because the details of life in Alaska make for a nice change from most cozies.
A quick reminder of the other posts from March – the Recommensdays were Books set in the Tower of London, and some first in series books; and the Books of the Week were The French Bookshop Murder, Slow Dance, The Love Haters, Murder at Gulls Nest and Love and Other Brain Experiments.
Happy Humpday!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 
Oh dear. I’m sorry that none of these worked for you especially Fishing for Trouble as an Alaskan setting sounds brilliant and I do like the cover. Hopefully there will be better books in store for both of us.
I was annoyed because I don’t like writing a whole post basically about stuff I didn’t like as much because it feels like a real downer. But they were the outliers in a month of really good stuff – lots of which will come out elsewhere. I’m glad I didn’t buy any more of the Alaska ones in anticipation of it being good though!