It's been my personal experience that with most good series', the first book is never quite as good as the next few; it pretty much has to serve as a series setup, a character and setting info-dump and maybe the author doesn't quite know the characters very well yet. So I always try to cut the first book a bit of slack.

That hasn't been the case at all with Kylie Logan's League of Literary Ladies series. Mayhem at the Orient Express was an outstanding first in a new cozy series. It's one of the few (only?) modern cozies I closed and thought "wow, that was really clever". She might have set the bar a bit high for herself.

But all that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy the heck out of The Legend of Sleepy Harlow - I did, I thought it was a great read once I got into it. Ms. Logan has a really great cast of characters, all of them (except the male romantic interest) strong, independent, smart women. The MC, Bea has a past she's hiding from, but she controls the parameters of her hiding. The romantic interest, Levi, has his own secrets and honestly, if the author doesn't give them up to us soon I'm gonna get narky. She's being too stingy with details.

Also, let me state for the record now, that Bea is FX O'Grady and this has been my assertion from the first book.

So, why wasn't this book as good as the first? The murder plot. I'm not saying it wasn't well done, but the killer was telegraphed early on so that while there were more than a couple viable suspects throughout, the ultimate reveal wasn't a surprise. (Mayhem's plot was a corker - it's revelations at the end were a bit of a slap upside my head in the best way.)

If an author introduces 8 characters but singles one out as an underdog and makes a point to elicit the MC's and the reader's sympathies, it's a dead giveaway. Plus, too much attention was paid to this person's accessories and nobody else's.

There's a sub-plot, the legend of local bootlegger and mobster Sleepy Harlow. Killed and beheaded by mobsters in 1930, legend has his ghost being seen around the island and the local librarian has written a history on him, soon to be published by an academic press. Bea's inadvertent involvement with the book has her delving into Sleepy's history at the same time the ghost hunters arrive trying to catch evidence of Sleepy's ghost. The culmination of this sub-plot was excellent; this is where the author excelled with the story. I loved it and it more than made up for the fact that the murderer was easily identifiable.

I love this series and I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys a cozy mystery; this one is better written than most and I'm really looking forward to the next one. ( )

Synopsis: It's almost Halloween and what better time for a ghost, or at least ghost hunters. The leader of the ghost hunters is a rather bossy OCD woman with little regard for her team or their intellectual property. In the process of breaking into Kate's winery, the leader gets killed. This raises the question of did Kate do it or was it the ghost.
Review: Bea plays the most prominent role in this story with the person who you'd expect to be the most involved, Chandra, almost completely missing. There are several twists and turns with the most surprising one that involves Kate's great-great grandparents. This was fun. ( )

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http://www.girllostinabook.com/2014/12/review-legend-of-sleepy-harlow-by-kylie.h... ( )

It's almost Halloween time and the Literary Ladies of South Bass Island, had chosen to read the spooky classic The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. But even South Bass Island carries its own legend of a headless Prohibition bootlegger named Charley Sleepy Harlow who possibly comes out on Halloween searching for his treasure.

When EGG (Elkhart Ghost Getters) show up at Bea's B and B to film yet another episode for their show. The leader has only one mission and that's to enter Kate Wilder's winery and get another shot of the infamous Sleepy Harlow that they claim to have a shot of from last year, that made their show oh so popular. Kate won't have any of them crossing their property. Not after destroying some of her really expensive grapes while filming last year. Disagreement and arguments fly, tensions rise and the leader of EGG turns up dead in a casket. Now Kate is getting blamed and Bea and the other Literary Ladies will not stand by and allow for their friend to go down when they are sure that she is innocent.

Oh I thought this would be a fun Halloween read and it certainly was. It had a mystery, it had a bit of magic and I loved the tie in of the legend of Sleepy Harlow. When Bea is requested by one of her dear friends to read her book before she gets it published and a cat pees all over her copy, Bea is on the mission to recreate her friend's book. So while trying to figure out who actually killed the leader of EGG, Bea is also snooping around town trying to dig up the history of Sleepy Harlow and someone is trying to get in her way. I loved following the story line and learning more about Sleepy, I found that a really nice side addition to the story that tied and made it that much more interesting. Thought I did not understand how Bea could actually recreate her friends book. If she was rewriting the entire thing, doesn

But the mystery was fun, even if I had it figured half way, everything else made this quiet a delightful read. From the wonderful storytelling by Logan, to the interesting plot and great characters!
't it then really become her own book? Since most of it is not actually her friends words?

I got a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange of an honest review. ( )