Rating: Liked It
Source: Publisher
Description: Avery Morgan has been hired to breathe new life into the Portage Path Women's Club, but first she'll have to deal with a dead body and a meddling ghost.
Avery Morgan has had a harrowing first week on the job as manager of the Portage Path Woman's Club. Not only is she in charge of a grand old home with a mountain of maintenance problems and scheduling nightmares--thanks to a recent fire in the Marigold meeting room--but she's also got Muriel Sadler to deal with. Muriel is the current president of the club, the one "nay" vote when the rest of the board voted "aye" to hiring Avery.
After a morning of dealing with another one of Muriel's snits and a meeting with the delicious and delightfully unsettling Ben Harkness, who will be handling renovations in the fire-damaged portions of the house, the last thing Avery needs is for one of the fuses to blow. Again.
She grabs her handy flashlight and heads into the basement, where she stumbles across Muriel's body. She also stumbles across an unexpected helper, Clemmie Bow, the ghost of a young woman who was accidentally killed in the building almost a hundred years ago.
Together the Clemmie and Avery are determined to solve Muriel's murder before the killer sends Avery to join Clemmie on the other side.
Genre: Mystery - Cozy, Paranormal
Why I Picked This Book: To be honest this sounded a bit like a grown up Nancy Drew with ghosts
My Impression: Well this was just fun! Maybe not my absolute favorite or most memorable read of the year but from start to finish it was a book I thoroughly enjoyed reading. Avery is taking over as business manager for an established women's club that happens to reside in an old mansion. And Avery just happens to have an interesting background. She grew up in a small town in New York state - and not just any small town but the small town of Lily Dale complete with mediums, seances and all things other worldly. I thoroughly enjoyed that she had this background that made her fairly knowledgable but at the same time had a serious dose of skepticism. It proves useful when she found herself face to face with Clemmie Bow a dashing young ghost in her most glamourous 1920s flapper style. I'm sincerely hoping we learn a bit more about Clemmie as the series progresses and she takes a bit more of an active role.
This being a women's club the politics and secrets are flowing at a pretty intense rate and when the thoroughly unlikable president Muriel Sadler is murdered no one is too shocked. But on the other hand who disliked Muriel enough to kill her? There's a lot to set up here and a lot of characters to introduce so at times the mystery felt a little haphazard. The bulk of the ending wasn't a huge surprise but the author did manage to to sneak a few unexpected reveals in. While it wasn't perfect I was satisfied with the ending and am excited to see where the series goes in the future. Avery is a likable main character with a decent amount of common sense and I do love a good ghost sidekick!
Would I Read More of this Series/Author? Absolutely! I'm really excited to see where this series goes next.
Would I Recommend this Book? If you love paranormal cozies you really can't miss this one!
* I received this book in exchange for an honest review. As always my opinions and impressions are completely my own. *
I like the meddling ghost bit of the story.
ReplyDeleteNot sure if it's my style but on a related note, I do want to read the Nancy Drew mysteries.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if I have heard of this one before, but it sure does sound fun! I bet I would enjoy it too.
ReplyDeleteA book that is absolutely fun to read is a winner in my way of thinking.
ReplyDeleteNice to see you enjoyed the start to another series!
ReplyDelete