Book Review: Little Bookshop of Murder by Maggie Blackburn

 

Little Bookshop of Murder: A Beach Reads Mystery

by Maggie Blackburn

I’m honestly not sure how this book has a 4 star average review on Amazon. I did read it on Kindle, as a free download from our library digital catalog. Was the editing of the Kindle edition so different from the editing on the hard copy? There are a good number of 1 to 3 star reviews that echo my own thinking.

The premise is an intriguing idea. Summer’s mother, Hildy, dies and Summer returns to her beach resort hometown to tie up the loose ends and decide what to do with Hildy’s book store. Hildy is an interesting character, though not even present, a free spirit and a town pillar, helping many people in her too short life. Summer has an interesting problem beyond the murder, her arachnophobia led to an unfortunate video taken of her which the faculty at her college are using to pressure her to conform to their expectations. (From what I’ve heard that can be a problem at some colleges, with or without the arachnophobia.) Summer soon begins to suspect that Hildy was murdered but she has history with the town police chief and he refuses to take her seriously.

There are some lovely descriptions of the area - “The moon lit the now deep purple-black water, sparkling silver where the light hit the surface.”

I love the relationship that evolves between Summer and the parrot, Darcy, as she learns to care for him.

There was some good interactions between characters, but there are also incredibly awkward character interactions that just don’t make sense to me. There are also a huge number of typos – missing words, poor word choices, wrong words, wrong word form or tense, and just plain missing words. Things like “She stopped when Summer’s eyes met eyes met hers.” Or, “had taken the opposite tact in her life” instead of opposite tack, which derives from the phrase about changing the position of the sail on a boat.

In the first couple chapters, we even have –

"There was the Aunt Hildy she knew and loved. Her mom's only sister, Agatha garnered no foolishness. Never had. In fact, it was one quality Sumer loved about her. She was quite the opposite from Hildy." It's obvious she changed who was Hildy at some point and didn't catch all the changes properly.

 “I just wasn’t thinking and signed the wrong papers,” Hildy said. She sat next to Summer. “The autopsy results on Hildy aren’t back yet.” I believe this is Aunt Agatha speaking.

There is a lot of repetition and things are said that are later forgotten in some way. For example, Doris tells Summer that her husband is ill and Summer says that she is story to hear about her husband. Then, three chapters later, Glads mentions it, “Doris’s husband isn’t having a good day,” and Summer asks, “Is he ill?”  

I can rarely guess who the killer is in a mystery but this one was completely obvious to me from about halfway through the book.

I think this book had a lot of potential, but it needed some good beta readers to point out the plot and characterization flaws then a good editor to catch all the mistakes.

Honestly, I’m really surprised it made it to publication with all the mistakes. My husband suggested that perhaps they had uploaded the wrong version to the Kindle, but that would be easily rectified and certainly should have been done by now if they were paying any attention at all. I downloaded this book around mid-June of 2021. If they have updated it since, then it may have improved significantly. I really hope so. I see they have another one planned, but I don't see myself reading it.