Read and Buried

Thanks to Winnie's new cider shop, Smythe Orchards is out of the red and folks can get their fix of the produce and other delectable products they love all year round. The locals are even booking the shop for events, including a June wedding! Winnie couldn’t be happier to see the barn filled to the rafters for the big bash—until her doting ex, Hank, is caught in a heated argument with the groom. Winnie plans to scold Hank after the party, but spots him running off instead. And when the groom turns up dead, apparently hit by the honeymoon getaway car, Hank is the main suspect. Now Hank is on the lam, and it’s up to Winnie to get to the core of the truth—before the real killer puts the squeeze on her . . .

Pulp Friction is the sequel to Julie Anne Lindsey's Apple Cider Slaying, and I'm honestly so stoked. After the murders and struggles at Christmas, Winnie has finally got her cider shop up and running! So successfully in fact that she even opens it up as a wedding venue – which turns out not to be as good for business as she hoped, because the groom gets murdered in her orchard.

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The long and the short of it is that I really enjoyed Pulp Friction, it was a fun sequel to a book that I really liked, and now I'm desperately shaking Goodreads to try to make the third book come out faster.

[This review is based on an ARC from Netgalley.]

Divorced single mom Mandy Meadows scrapes by working as a barista and receiving payments from her cousin, Ryan, who rents her basement apartment. At night, she and her teenage daughter Vellum run a successful home business creating journaling content on their popular social media channels.

But Mandy's carefully organized world is about to come crashing down. While filming their latest journaling tutorial, Mandy and Vellum hear a loud noise on the basement stairs, and Mandy is horrified to find Ryan dead on the landing. The police quickly start to treat the death as a murder - with Mandy and Vellum as chief suspects. Why would someone murder Ryan? Determined to clear their names and find Ryan's killer, Mandy soon discovers he wasn't the man she thought he was...

Heather Redmond's Journaled to Death is the intersection of two of my most favourite interests: stationery and cozy crime novels. Underemployed single-mother Mandy has a lot on her plate; her job in the hospital café is under threat, her stationery channel is taking up more of her time – and her cousin has just been murdered.

Okay, I need to get this off my chest before I go further into this review: I WOULD REALLY LIKE A COZY MYSTERY WITH AN OPENLY BISEXUAL PROTAGONIST PLEASE. Like, sure, Mandy talks about how hot the men around her are, but she also talks about how hot her female neighbour who stress-bakes late night brownies is, and how proud she'd be to land her hot female frenemy as a date, so would it REALLY be that much of a stretch to make them an option in her dating pool? Especially in a book that acknowledges that bisexuality and polyamory exists, at least for minor characters!

(It might also mean that there was less of the "I'm not saying you're asking for trouble by dressing like that, but," stuff going on, which would be SPECTACULAR.)

Anyway, back to the actual book! ( Read more... )