"A high-end wedding on a private island off the coast of Seattle sounds like something out of a magazine. But for bestselling mystery author Kate Valentine, it’s more like a nightmare. Why Kate agreed to attend her ex-fiancé’s wedding is its own enigma, but she’ll plaster on a fake smile for two nights, with the aid of free champagne, naturally. And because the groom happens to be her editor, she’ll try to finish a draft of her latest Loretta Starling mystery as a wedding gift. But when the bride is poisoned and Kate stumbles across a dead body, she finds herself in a real-life mystery that eerily echoes the plot of her latest novel. And the only person who seems willing to help Kate catch the killer is Jake Hawkins, aka: the Hostralian; aka: Kate’s biggest romantic regret. As the wine flows and the weather threatens to hold every guest hostage, bitter resentments and long-held grudges surface amongst the colorful crowd. Anyone could be capable of murder, it seems. What would Loretta do? Unfortunately, Kate doesn’t have a clue."
I had a really fun time with this read, but I do think that it may be victim to a slight mis-marketing issue. I've seen it marketed as half romance/half mystery and I think that is a little misleading. I love both romance and mystery as genres so I was all-in on this read. However, I do think that if you are going to try and blend genres, then you need to make sure both sides are equally well-developed and well-executed and in the case of this read, I think it fell a little short. This read, to me, like a cozy mystery with a heavy romance subplot.
The mystery elements were fantastic. It is squarely in the cozy mystery category and Moke captures the vibes perfectly. We have a cast of colorful characters stuck on an island together when the bodies start dropping. I love that the characters all have different levels of connection with each other which leads to various different theories for motives which makes for a fun mystery. I found the different investigation paths to be well thought out and fun to see the characters explore. However, I did find that when we get to the ending reveal, so much had happened in the book that I and the characters were just a bit tired out. I wanted the reveal just a little bit earlier or maybe to have a bit of a break before the reveal in order to catch our breath. I enjoyed the actual reveal but the pacing was just a little off.
The romance elements were a bit of a miss for me only in that I felt we needed more time to develop them. On paper, we hit all the usual romance plot points, but I felt like we missed out on a lot of the emotional development parts of the relationship because our MCs were too busy solving the mystery. Also, the transitions between the mystery plot and the romance plot were more jarring than I think they should have been. At times, it felt like there were two distinct drafts of this plot - one pure mystery and one pure romance - and the final draft was just trading off on chapters between each of them. I think this would have been more successful if the romance was focused on a little less and instead of trying for it to be a dual plot line with the mystery, that it took a step back to become a subplot. I think Moke did a great job hitting the romance beats and I would be interested in reading a full adult romance from her in the future.
The cast of characters was by far the best part of this read. We get some messy relationships, complex family dynamics, rich people problems, and a lot of scheming. I loved that our MC is a mystery writer who is at this wedding as a sort of outsider so we get a lot of the character reveals through her investigation. While some of the characters were a little over the top, I found all of them to feel realistic and not too caricature-y. There is a fairly large cast of characters, but Moke does a great job of really honing in on a detail that makes each individual character stand out which makes it easier for the reader to keep them straight. I also liked that we get introduced to the characters pretty steadily at the beginning, but with enough of a gap between them to give us that time to let the details sink in.
Overall, this was a really fun cozy mystery with a strong romance plot. Great cast of characters with a fast paced mystery investigation. I would have liked to see the two genres blended together a little bit more.
Thanks to NetGalley and St Martin's Press for the ARC. Publication date was January 21, 2025
No comments:
Post a Comment