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A charming cozy mystery, the third in a series featuring Miranda Abbott, and the first experienced by this reader.

Miranda Abbott is a former TV detective, a sort of everyone’s favorite Jessica Fletcher, who traded in her sophisticated acting chops to star in a blissfully cheesy, but highly popular, television murder mystery series. With her red hair and regal bearing, Miranda is a charmingly annoying character, not at all short on confidence, who now breezes through life solving mysteries (which seem to follow her, wherever she is), falling subject to only the odd lingering question about the direction her life (her love, and her career) has taken.

Now on hiatus from LA and living in the small Pacific coastal town of Happy Rock, Oregon, where she co-owns a bookstore with her ambiguously connected husband Edgar (are they married? Are they divorced? Do they still love each other?), Miranda can’t help but jump in when a Mystery Writer Festival, to be held in her bookstore, becomes the backdrop for murder.

Peopled with so many oddball characters that at first, felt impossible for this reader to keep straight, once the story gets going the community of eccentrics, the visiting authors, and the layered mystery drew me in — cleanly plotted with several twists, puzzles to solve, and some truly funny moments, one cannot help but think the initial two books would be definitely worth a read for some additional backstory.

An entertaining read which will keep a reader guessing and dreaming about the ocean, (not to mention, running a bookstore), I enjoyed this book and will no doubt be back to visit the folks in Happy Rock, Oregon.

A great big thank you to Netgalley, the authors and the publisher for an ARC of this book. All thoughts presented are my own.