Shakespeare professor Summer Merriweather returns to Brigid’s Island, NC, for her mother Hildy’s funeral. Her mother was a beloved member of the community and owned a bookstore specializing in the Romance genre, Beach Reads. The cause of death is ruled a heart attack, but Summer’s mother was healthy and active. Something doesn’t feel right to Summer. When she finds a cryptic note that reads, “Sell the bookstore or die”, Summer begins to realize there may be something more sinister behind her mother’s death.
As Summer reconnects with her Aunt Agatha and her cousin Piper, she learns more about her mother’s life. Hildy was part of a close-knit book club and read to an ill elderly man. She attended yoga, was feisty, and sparred with a few residents about selling her book store. Would someone kill to get the bookstore? Or were they after her mother’s First Editions? Could it be the arcade owner looking to expand or a local English teacher? As Summer starts sleuthing, she runs into old acquaintances, reopens old wounds, and starts to wonder if she really can come home again.
This is the start of an entertaining new series with a Shakespeare professor in the midst of career turmoil as the main character. Summer is at times a little pretentious, but acknowledges her lack of relatability and realizes her faults. She works to understand her mother as a person and to solve her mystery and find her justice. The story is well-plotted with several suspects thrown into the mix. The story does tend to lag in the middle but picks up speed at the end. Although readers may identify the killer early on, they will have a pleasant time getting to the final outcome. Enjoyable characters, an idyllic setting, and a solid mystery make this an entertaining read. Perfect for a day at the beach! I am looking forward to reading the next in the series to see if Summer’s old flame Cash, who she left at the altar, makes an appearance.
Summer Merriweather's career as a Shakespeare professor hangs by a bookbinder's thread. Academic life at her Virginia university is a viper's pit, so Summer spends her summer in England, researching a scholarly paper that, with any luck, will finally get her published, impress the Dean, and save her job. But her English idyll ends when her mother, Hildy, shuffles off her mortal coil from an apparent heart attack.
Returning to Brigid's Island, NC, for the funeral, Summer is impatient to settle the estate, sell her mom's embarrassingly romance-themed bookstore, Beach Reads, and go home. But as she drops by Beach Reads, Summer finds threatening notes addressed to Hildy: "Sell the bookstore or die."
Clearly, something is rotten on Brigid's Island. What method is behind the madness? Was Hildy murdered? The police insist there's not enough evidence to launch a murder investigation. Instead, Summer and her Aunt Agatha screw their courage to the sticking place and start sleuthing, with the help of Hildy's beloved book club. But there are more suspects on Brigid's Island than are dreamt of in the Bard's darkest philosophizing. And if Summer can't find the villain, the town will be littered with a Shakespearean tragedy's worth of corpses--including her own.
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