Hollywood Ending is a fun, light-hearted and entertaining Hollywood-themed murder mystery. The series heroine is Dayna Anderson, a former actress (the semi-famous kind whom people mistakenly think they must’ve known back in high school) who now works as an apprentice private investigator, solving cases for the reward money. In this second book in the series, Dayna gets pulled into a murder case when a Hollywood publicist gets killed during an ATM robbery. Dayna finds the killer within the first few chapters, so it’s a pretty safe bet she’s got it wrong, and spends the rest of the book tracking down one red herring after another until she finally confronts the killer.

I had fun reading this book. It’s a quick read and an entertaining cozy mystery, and I love all the funny Hollywood-esque adventures. I also like the realism of the heroine in this case immediately calling police when she gets a lead instead of insisting on running after the killer herself (a fun trope in cozy mysteries, but somewhat unsafe in real life).

That being said, the number of erroneous tips Dayna calls in to the police did become annoying after a while. Like, how many times does your hypothesis need to be proven wrong before you become less confident that you’re absolutely 100% correct this time around? To be fair, I did have the benefit of knowing there was a whole stack of pages left to go in the story before the killer is revealed, but still, with all the erroneous leads she calls in, I’m surprised the police haven’t started blocking her calls yet.

Still, overall it’s a fun and funny mystery series. I enjoyed all the celebrity events, and particularly getting to peek at what could conceivably be inside an awards show swag bag. And for all my eye rolling at Dayna’s tendency to chase red herrings, I have to admit I didn’t guess the killer at all.

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Thank you to Thomas Allen & Son for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.