Death by Beach Read is the 9th instalment in the Lighthouse Library Mystery series, but as a total newbie to the series, I had no problem diving right in. Lucy, a librarian, has just purchased a historic home with her fiance, Connor, the town mayor. One night, Lucy and Connor come home to find a man strangled to death in their kitchen.

The victim, Jimmy, turns out to be the estranged twin of the Ralph, man who’d sold Lucy and Connor the house, and his death soon causes old stories and rumours to resurface. The house is reportedly haunted by the elderly patriarch. His ghost is said to have scared away Ralph and Jimmy’s younger sister Jo decades ago, when she was a teenager. The experience traumatized her so much she became a recluse, and never set foot in that house again. Along with the house’s complicated family history, Lucy has to deal with a woman claiming to be the victim’s widow, and the town mean girl, who hates Lucy and seems intent on closing the library down.

I was drawn in pretty much right from the start. The mystery is a lovely cozy, not a very gripping page-turner, but a low-key comfort read with cookies and hot cocoa. The story of Ralph, Jimmy, and especially Jo, was very compelling, and like Lucy, I sympathized with Jo for having the trauma of a teenage experience have such large and long-lasting effects on her life.

Another major standout for me was Charles the cat. He saves Lucy’s life at least two times that I can remember, and possibly many more times throughout the series. He’s a darling side character, with his own personality, and his own responses to the various other characters. I also love how he and Lucy work together, and how much Lucy clearly cares for him as a valued member of her family.

The ghost story elements were fortunately not at all scary. Similar to ghosts in Nancy Drew mysteries, it’s pretty clear from the start that there are non-supernatural reasons behind the ‘hauntings.’  There was a plot thread involving one of the suspects that I think could have used a bit of a clearer resolution — that suspect just disappeared from the story, and we never quite understood why they acted as they did.

That being said, the overall ending was satisfying. The big reveal took me by surprise — I didn’t guess the villain at all, nor their motivation. And I liked how things turned out for Ralph and Jo by the end.

+

Thank you to Crooked Lane Books for an e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.

When potter Abigail Mast advertises for a mail order groom, she doesn’t expect two eligible bachelors to show up at her door. The bishop comes up with an unusual solution: Abigail must court them both, and decide whom she wants to marry by Valentine’s Day!

From the novel‘s narration — and its title! — it’s pretty clear from the start who, between Caleb the handyman and Phillip the farmer, will win Abigail’s hand. To the author’s credit, she doesn’t belabour the love triangle aspect too much. Abigail and Caleb hit it off almost immediately, and their kisses send heat and sparks through both of them. In contrast, Abigail and Phillip have many pleasant conversations about seeds, and at multiple points, Abigail has to remind herself to give Phillip a fair shot at her hand.

To the author’s credit, she gives Phillip a well-developed romance of his own. While Abigail and Caleb are wonderful characters as well, there were times I found myself more drawn to Phillip’s romantic subplot. Partly, it’s because while Abigail and Caleb hit it off immediately, Phillip and his love interest have a more contentious start to their relationship. They also have a legit barrier standing in their way — the fact that Phillip is technically in town to marry Abigail, and neither he nor his love interest wants to hurt Abigail’s feelings. And finally, the secondary heroine’s backstory is more complicated, with present-day implications that make her understandably reluctant to pursue a romantic relationship. In contrast, Abigail’s tragic backstory, about her guilt over the death of a childhood bully, doesn’t seem as big a barrier.

Both romances develop at a pretty good pace. I do wish Abigail had announced her decision earlier, only because she had a clear preference so early on, and her delay in announcing this caused unnecessary pain to the secondary couple. But I’m glad the author didn’t delay Abigail’s decision to the very end.

There’s also a rather sweet subplot about an elderly man named Birchbark who seems to have magical powers. He sets Caleb up to do some tasks that are intended to teach him valuable life lessons, and he has a pack that seems to yield more abundance than what is put in. This was a cute plot thread, and well-suited for the holiday theme of some of the scenes, but it didn’t really add too much to the story for me. The romances were magical enough without the existence of actual magic.

But the subplot that I thought actually was unnecessary, and added a nasty sheen on an otherwise feel-good story, was the one about the man who abused his wife and was also having an affair. This plot thread is somewhat linked to Abigail’s story — the man makes a physical threat towards her and her two suitors, and his mistress played a role in her tragic backstory. I also see how this subplot added tension to the otherwise almost perfectly smooth sailing of Abigail and Caleb’s romance. But overall, it just felt tacked on for drama. I may have understood if the abusive husband was being set up as the Big Bad of the entire series, but that doesn’t seem the case. I only hope his wife gets a romance of her own later in the series.

The author also has an annoying habit of ending chapters with ellipses. She often uses it as a fade-to-black mechanism when the scene starts heading in a steamier direction. And it’s totally unnecessary. I admit this is a minor quibble, and it’s nitpicky to even bring it up. But it just makes the dialogue or the narration feel artificial, and that pulls me out of the scene.

Overall, though, it’s a good romance. I love the unusual angle of having the woman court the man. I find the bishop hilarious, and I love both main couples and the broader cast of characters.

+

Thank you to Kensington Books for an e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.

In This Might Hurt, Nat Collins goes to a remote island to save her younger sister Kit from a cult. I’m a sucker for thrillers involving sisters, and cults are prime material for a thriller. I still remember being disturbed by how cult leaders feed on people’s vulnerabilities when I read that Sweet Valley High novel where Jessica Wakefield’s twin sister and friends have to save her from one.

This Might Hurt starts off as a fairly solid thriller, if a bit slow-moving at times. The story is told from three perspectives: Nat, Kit, and an unnamed girl who grew up in an abusive household. I loved the story about Nat and Kit’s relationship — their loving yet complicated relationships with their mother and with each other, and their shared grief when their mother died. I also loved the tension that’s gradually revealed between the sisters — a major secret that Nat rushes to the island to keep Kit from finding out, and the way Nat had to step in as both older sister and mother for Kit, because of their mom’s depression.

I was less interested in the unnamed third narrator. Even though she later turns out to be pivotal to the plot, the mystery surrounding her identity felt forced, and it took a while for her story to take shape. The child abuse inflicted by her father were also emotionally difficult to read about, so heads up if that kind of content is a trigger for you. (I’ve put some examples at the bottom of this post, if you want to get an idea of the content.)

The structure of Nat and Kit’s chapters also slowed the pace down for me. We don’t get Kit’s narration until a bit over a third through the book, which does set up the mystery around her situation, but it also lessens the degree of our immersion into the story’s atmosphere. Nat’s search for Kit is urgent, but there’s a detachment to the narration that makes it feel less so, and the unnamed narrator’s chapters only serve to slow down the narration even further.

All that being said, the final few chapters of the novel saved it for me. There’s a reveal late in the book that reframes our understanding of the story and the characters to-date, significantly ratchets up the action and emotional urgency of the story, and sets up an exciting new direction for the story. Some of the elements of the ending are a bit too convenient to be believable — one character in particular acts in a way that’s completely out of character for them — but I was interested enough to willingly suspend my disbelief. I found the ending chilling, unexpected, and rather sad, which is just the complicated mess of emotions that makes a good thriller such a fun read. I only wish I’d had more of this from the very beginning.

+

Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for an e-galley in exchange for an honest review.

+

Some examples of the child abuse: The man required his daughters to complete a certain number of points to earn their right to sleep that night, and things like kneeling on broken glass are given extra points. In one scene, he forced the unnamed narrator to stay afloat in cold, dirty water for an hour, even though she didn’t know how to swim, and forced her older sister to keep watch for him. And in another, he forces his daughter to do a task that risks breaking her mother’s beloved family heirloom; that scene ends with an act of deliberate psychological cruelty towards the mother.