This is the first book in the Lemon Tree Bay Mysteries and follows Clara after she returns to her small hometown. It wasn't her choice to trade in her big city life for the quirky coastal town of Lemon Tree Bay, but life is funny like that. Turns out, she isn't the only person to recently return - her ex boyfriend is back in town as well. He's a cop and dating the daughter of local royalty which wouldn't be too bad until Clara finds herself walking into a murder scene of the local accountant. His grandson, Lucas, had recently come to town and he and Clara flirted a bit as she cut his hair just before the body was found. Now, with the town opinion split down the middle on if Lucas is a murderer or not, and with her ex investigating her new crush, it might just be up to Clara to follow the clues and see if the math adds up.
This was a really cute cozy mystery with a side of romance that I overall enjoyed. I've been slowly getting more into the cozy side of the mystery genre so I'm still figuring out what is usual for the genre. I really liked a lot of aspects of this book, but there were just a few things that were missing that sort of dampened my overall rating. That being said, I'd absolutely love to continue in the series in the future!
The one part that really hit it out of the park for me was the setting. I love a quirky small town and Lemon Tree Bay does not disappoint. The story is set in Australia which I knew when I started but somehow every time I sat down to read and saw the lighthouse on the cover, my New Englander came out and I somehow kept picturing small coastal New England towns. The only issue this caused was me being confused for like half a second when details like it being nice weather for a picnic in February popped up but that is 100% on me. We got some great key details about the town that really helped solidify the atmosphere for the story. A little eccentric, a little touristy, a little beachy, and a whole lot close-knit. As with any small town, the local characters are also out in full force in the story which, again, added to the overall atmosphere. I think Mayfair did a really great job of balancing the number of places we needed to go to in the story so that the reader wouldn't get overwhelmed. This book is on the shorter side (270ish pages) so if we got much more, I think it would have gotten confusing. It also helped that we returned to a few of the places more than once so by the end, I felt really familiar with those locations (I'm assuming they'll continue to play a pretty significant role in later books). There was one scene where there's a cricket match on the page and I've never seen a game of cricket played in my life so I was a bit lost in the terminology. However, that isn't a fault of the book and Mayfair, to her credit, made it very obvious what was a good thing or a bad thing in the game so even if I didn't exactly understand the scoring rules, I could still follow along.
I'm a little torn on the character relationships in this story. On the one hand, I really loved Clara's relationship with her mother and with her friends/acquaintances. She's very friendly and kind to the people around her and Mayfair does a great job at sticking in little details about the history the characters share. However, her relationships with her ex and Lucas I found to be underdeveloped for my taste. For an example, when we first see her ex, she asks him 2 questions - what he's doing back in town, and if he's still seeing his girlfriend. I got a real feeling of animosity and assumed that maybe the ex cheated on Clara with this other woman or maybe he got with this other woman really soon after the break up. But when we eventually find out the reason for the breakup, I didn't feel like it matched the level of emotion that was shown by both Clara and her ex. I think the reason for the break up was fine, but I needed a little more emotional development or insight in order for me to fully understand and be on board with how Clara and the ex were acting. My issues with Clara and Lucas were similar - basically just boiled down to I didn't get any real chemistry between them so I wasn't understanding how they were romantically involved. It seemed like Clara had more chemistry with her friend the barista at the cafe than she had with Lucas. Most of the story is told from Clara's POV, but we do get the occasional snippet from both her ex and Lucas but I didn't find these snippets sufficient to make up for what I was missing in the relationship. Since this is the first book in the series, I thought maybe we'd only get a few details but these two romantic relationships might get further explored in the next books. However, all plot lines were wrapped up by the end which left me a little bummed that we didn't get more development during the book. This might just come down to a personal preference or what I'm used to from reading a lot of straight-up romance books, so maybe other readers won't feel the same.
I really enjoyed the path the investigation took and I'm finding that my favorite cozy mysteries (or maybe most cozy mysteries do this) rely pretty heavily on small town gossip. Small town secrets/gossip is almost always a winning trope for me and this book was no exception. We get a good number of secrets being mentioned and there was a good mix of outcomes - true, but not relevant to the investigation; half true; 100% false; and, of course there's true, and the key to the investigation. I thought the reason for Clara getting involved in the investigation was unique and very realistic for someone who doesn't have any law enforcement or journalism background. Clara is very much just a regular person who is doing her best to make sure all lines of the investigation are exhausted. I thought the eventual reveal and motive for the murder was also unique, well developed, and realistic. I did have a bit of an issue with the pacing at the end where we go pretty quickly from Clara putting all the pieces together to suddenly her being in danger when there wasn't any previous threat of danger. The danger element is quickly handled (like in a page or two) and then we're back to normal. It was just a bit of a jarring situation and I wasn't necessarily expecting that level of danger based on how the investigation was going so far. I would have preferred maybe a little bit of hinting at danger (maybe some threatening notes or shady figures lurking around) before we got the actual danger on page.
As a final note, there's also one key detail about Clara that isn't mentioned at all in the book description (so I'll consider it a spoiler and not mention it specifically) but it threw me for a loop. It isn't a bad thing by any means but it felt like such a key detail for Clara, the investigation, and her relationships that I was surprised it wasn't mentioned in the description and just sort of plopped down into the book. This is the first book from Mayfair that I've read so I'm not sure if Clara was a side character in a different series or not but this one detail really made me feel like I was missing out on something. That being said, I really loved this one detail and wished it was used more throughout the investigation. I read another romantic suspense/mystery book last year whose main character had a similar trait and I thought it was really fun and a great detail but that trait was used much more in that other book and I wished we got a similar sort of structure in this story.
Overall, I really enjoyed this cozy mystery and can't wait to return to Lemon Tree Bay. I loved the setting, atmosphere, investigation, and most of the character relationships. I would like more development between Clara and the love interests (both current and former) so maybe I'll get more of that in the future books in the series.
Thanks BookSirens - I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Expected publication date is September 24, 2021.
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