A FREE read eBook through Barnes and Noble for the NOOK. A typical, predictable outcome and not much depth, and it needs to be professionally proofread for errors. This is #1 of 9 in The Charlotte Denver Cozy Mystery Series. It is actually only 102 pages, including some of her recipes at the end of the book, which I will be testing a few: (1) Sweet Chili Shrimp, (2) Buffalo Wing and Chickpea Stew, and (3) Carrot Cake. The author gets 1-star for adding the recipes, which I thought was a great idea to add to a novel.

Charlotte owns a little cafe, Charlotte's Plaice, in the little seaside town of St. Eves in the southwest corner of England.

In walks a handsome stranger, Blake Hamilton, and it appears Blake and Charlotte will eventually have a love interest. But, the next day, Blake is found dead on a yacht owned byGabe and Samantha Driscoll, rich folks who have also just pulled into the marina.

Blake was found dead inside the cabin. His drink having been laced with Sam's painkillers then was shot up with weedkiller.

There wasn't much of a story between the finding of his body and the stupid little twist at the end. The author wanted you to believe that Blake and Samantha were having the affair, but it was actually Gabe and Blake having the affair. Yes! He was gay! Gabe only married Sam to keep up appearances. Gabe actually killed Blake because he couldn't have him, and he had plans to kill off Sam because he actually couldn't stand her....See how stupid!

Although not the greatest read, I love the idea of the author incorporating and sharing her personal recipes in a novel.

10/14/2019 UPDATE: I have tried all three recipes mentioned above. None of them are extraordinary. The Carrot Cake was really good, although still not as good as my daughter's Carrot Cake. This one was a little fluffy compared to Cara's denser cake. I liked the Sweet Chili Shrimp, but Ben didn't care for it. Neither of us cared for the Buffalo Wing and Chickpea Stew. ( )

Cute story

Well written murder mystery, quick fun read. I saw the ending coming, if you're looking for something with serious suspense this isn't the book for you. But if you'd like something light and easy to read this is a great pick. Loved the recipes in the back, an adorable addition to the theme of the book. ( )

WOW. This was a very fun book to read.

Set in the West country of England (Cornwall and Devon) which I love, because I have ancestors who come from those counties, in the seaside town of St Eves, (again which is possibly a play on St Ives in Cornwall which does have lovely golden sandy beaches and excellent surfing waves), Charlotte Denver runs a cafe on the marina called Charlottes Plaice. The specific spelling refers to a fish species, and St Eves is a fishing town.

Charlotte lived in Spain for a number of years before returning to her home town of St Eves and starting up her cafe. She also adds Spanish recipes to her menu which makes for some very interesting combinations when ordering from the menu.

St Eves also has a marina. Some piers have house boats with permanent residents and other piers are for boats that tie up during their voyages. One boat that tied up recently is the Lady Samantha, owned by a man named Gabriel Driscoll and his wife Samantha after whom the boat was named. Samantha was eating at Charlottes cafe and arranging for her to cater for a party that Samantha was planning to have on board her boat. But when a young man named Blake passed by, Samantha got all jittery and quickly left when she spotted him.

The next morning when Charlotte arrived at the boat to get more details for the party, the boat was empty and noone was on board. So Charlotte ventured on board to look for Samantha. Instead she found Blake's body and quickly called the local police.

I'll say no more, except that Charlotte finally manages to get herself a boyfriend while helping the police to solve the murder.

Excellent storyline, very interesting plot twist, one that I have not seen in any other Cozy mystery, and some great writing.

Oh and also some great Spanish recipes at the end of the book as well.

I give this 5 stars!! As I have said before, when I cannot put a book down, and I read it straight through in just 2 hours, then it deserves 5 stars!!! ( )

This book confuses me on many levels.

Not the plot. Something else.

To me, two things are off about this book. These issues overlap and compound each other, but when I tried to write about them jointly, I didn't feel it got my points across. So, I will discuss the issues separately, and overlap a bit where I must.

The first issue is the writing style itself.

It is just odd.

The tone is exceedingly stilted and awkward, yet also earnest. Like a robot imitating a human, a bad actor over-rehearsing their lines, or a nervous child reciting memorized answers in a classroom, all of whom have been instructed to perfunctorily lay out all the elements that classify this is a cozy mystery in the first few chapters:
- Set up the protagonist's tragic past (likely an orphan!) to explain why she ended up in this town. Check.
- Make sure she has adoring parent-type people who cared for her while she was growing up and still dote on her. Check.
- Establish how quaint and charming the town is. Check.
- Lay out what business the protagonist owns because cozy mystery protagonists tend to run a business. Check.
- Make sure the best friend is introduced, and also is perfect in every way. Check.
- Start bringing in the quirky townspeople and note which habit is their identifying trait. Check.
- *checks watch* It is time to find a body now.
- Oh, right. Love interest. He also has to be perfect, and even though they already love each other they can't figure that out until near the end to create "tension." Check.

And so on.

It comes off like the author had a checklist for what cozy mysteries should have in them, and was making sure all the bases were covered right away to prove it is a genuine cozy mystery. This kind of thing loosened up a bit later, after there wasn't so much to introduce, but it was still pretty pervasive throughout and very distracting.

This brings me to the next issue I had because, despite this earnest effort, a major part of the world-building was completely lost on me in the "personality" of the book, which was only exacerbated by the odd writing style.

I've thought about this for several weeks, and the best way I can describe it is that it's like the "Victor/Victoria" of books:

It reads like an American author imitating a British author who is writing like an American author.

I... did not realize the book is supposed to take place in England until well into it. I thought it took place in NEW England. While it could be said that this is my oversight for getting it as a freebie and reading it without looking at the summary first, that only means that I would've been really disappointed because I didn't get the atmosphere that was advertised. From my perspective, nothing about it remotely said "Britain" or "British author" to me until well into the book. And, when it did so, it was, again, odd.

My first clue was when Charlotte's best friend, who happens to have a small nephew, randomly talks about diaper-changing, seemingly for no reason other than to insert the word "nappies." I was like, "WTF?" After a couple more oddly placed British terms or phrases and (I think) a definitive reference to the town being in England (I can't remember for sure what the defining moment was; I wish I'd marked it with a note), I realized this is a British-themed cozy mystery. This dual personality only made it feel more contrived because it began to seem that more and more scenes or phrases were added for no purpose other than to support the "British" atmosphere (for example, a tourist randomly needed information about the town and Charlotte points them toward the tourism "centre," instead of the "center"). The British atmosphere felt like an afterthought, not a major focal point. Even after figuring out it's meant to be British, I couldn't reconcile that in my head. Throughout the whole thing, I continued to get tripped up by blatantly out of place British terms and spellings among American-sounding dialog, descriptions, and narratives.

After figuring this out, I then rationalized that the author must be an American who is trying very hard to make the book sound "British," but has failed to be convincing at it. Either that or the book was originally written to be in New England, then it was decided this wouldn't market well so they did "find and replace" on all the American terms they could easily swap with British ones (no matter how odd they sound in the context) to make it convincing (which would also explain why it felt like there were so many missed opportunities to replace obviously American terms and phrases that still remained). Eventually, I just felt like I was reading one of those school essays where you write a short story centered around a list of vocabulary words provided by your teacher.

Having had enough of this mystery by about 50% in, I went to the author's site to see if she was British or American. I really expected her to be American because that would actually cause this to make more sense--it really would have just been an American trying to set a British atmosphere and not doing a great job at it.

According to her site, she was born in south London.

O_o

THIS CONFUSED ME EVEN MORE.

I just... I have no idea. Did a ghostwriter write this? Was it purposefully done? Are they trying to combine American and British styles to try to appeal to a wider audience? Was the author born in London, but then moved as a young child to America, and so her perspective is slightly British but mostly American and so that comes off in the way she writes? Regardless of how this happened, did they think no one would notice and published it anyway? Mostly, I just want to know what happened to cause this and why someone thought it was still a good idea to publish it this way. The curiosity, it burns.

Before concluding, I want to clarify two things:

1) I am not bothered because the book is British-themed and I didn't want to read a British-themed book. I love British cozy mysteries and have read several.

2) I am bothered because of how distracting and confusing this dual personality was as a reader, there is no explanation or reason for it, and it hindered my ability to enjoy the book as much as I might have otherwise.

But, having said all that, the most confusing part of all is that I still liked this book enough to want to at least try the second book in the series. I have abandoned books at less than 10% in the past without finishing them due to oddities like this, but for some reason I was taken in. I think because, despite its major flaws, there is potential and I want to see where it goes--for the story's sake, but also to see if these weird issues iron themselves out as time goes on. ( )

Read this on my Kindle as a brief change between other novels and it was quite disappointing: very much in the cozy murder book genre, the writing is simple (over-simple?) and the plot covers a murder case with romantic overtones added. Along the same lines as the Agatha Raisin books. If you like that sort of thing, this will add to your repertoire. ( )