It's been awhile since I picked up a Tara Holloway novel, and I don't know why - they're really fun and better built than your average cozy. Needing to read a book where the character had to be good with a gun was just the motivation I needed to get back into the series.

In this book Tara is investigating an email scam, a Facebook scam, and two non-profits that might not really be non-profits; one of these involved an animal sanctuary, and up-front, I skimmed a lot when this story line came forward, although the wrap up of it was awesome. Running through the whole of the story is her boyfriend and best friend (an IRS and DEA agent respectively) going deep undercover against the Mexican drug cartel.

While Tara's investigations are relatively lightweight and suffuse the storyline with humour, the cartel storyline is not light. Kelly has done her research and, while she has a tendency to overshare that research with readers sometimes, here it's relevant, timely and the perfect hook for setting the level of danger involved. Tara contributes once or twice, but is mostly in the dark about what's going on until the end. And the end is unbelievably tense for a cozy and the happy ending doesn't come without scars and baggage.

My biggest complaint about the book is the level of internal dialog the reader has to put up with as Tara agonises over Nick's safety and whether or not he's alive. There was just a little too much of it and it became tedious. Otherwise, a great read and I'm glad I already have the next one ready to go. ( )

I read another book in this series and liked it. I have to admit that the book titles are fun to say. What I do like about this series is the fun, cozy mystery feel I get from these books. What I mean by this is that you can read these books without really expecting many twists, entertaining characters, some laughs, and a happy ending. Which is what you will get with this book. However this time I just was not feeling the storyline thus I was only half intrigued by the book. The only thing that kind of made it for me was the funny antics of Tara and Nick. Yet after a while even I grew tried of this to the point that I got half way into the book and put it down. I finally came back to it only to find myself skimming and even jumped ahead the last half of the book. ( )