What can you do when you want to be the heroin in your own story but you’re stuck as the damsel in distress? Jill Gardner the owner of a quirky library coffee shop mixture appropriately named, Coffee, Books, and More” in the tourist location at South Cove was enjoying her quiet Wednesday afternoon curled up with a mystery novel, without a worry in her mind that the fictional story on her lap can soon turn into her reality.
South Cove had given Jill an escape from the repercussions of her divorce and a weekend getaway after she quit her high end job. While she was enjoying one of her earlier visits she meets Emily, an older outspoken woman who helps Jill see what she really wants in life and after her divorce was finalized her weekend getaway at South Cove had quickly become her new home.
After a few years of comfort living Jill has to learn the hard way that dealing with a friend’s death is more exhausting when the death becomes a small-town mystery in which she plays, a grief-stricken friend, a suspect with a motive, a peculiar victim, and is eventually forced to play an obedient damsel in distress by a handsome yet strictly off-limits detective.
“Guidebook to Murder” by Lynn Cahoon illustrates, Jill, a woman in love with losing herself in books getting the unwelcomed opportunity to live through an adventure rather than read through one. Jill realizes too soon that she misses her typical reality and decides to start her own investigation. After all she has nobody to trust with the information she is uncovering. As the evidence piles onward her troubles only get more violent leaving her alone and defenseless while trying to uncover the murder. Simultaneously dodging aggressive businessmen, an untrustworthy mayor, an insane family willing to go to extremes to contest a will, and oh yeah trying to stay alive. As you are tangled in Jill’s organized chaos of detective work you can’t help but wreck your own brain to solve the mystery too.
Welcome to Jill’s, “Coffee, Books, and More” much more…
Rating: 8/10
Source: NetGalley
Publication: April 17, 2014
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