*3.5 ( )

While the book could use some tighter editing, it is almost local (Auburn University is mentioned once), tackles slavery and the children who came out of this, mixed in with local history and a great hurricane finale. I am going to try another one in this series. ( )

I loved it!! Not a PI, not FBI, not even PD. She's an archeologist that solves cases, whether they want her to or not! ;) When you are meticulously working through layers of dirt, on occasion, things you are not expecting show up. And people don't like it when their buried stuff is found. This series is going to be a great read. So glad I stumbled on it! ( )

ARTIFACTS was an entertaining mystery. Faye Longchamp was an archaeology student until she was forced to drop out to take care of her mother and grandmother. Paying their last bills has made it impossible for her to return to school and threatens Faye's heritage. She is spending every cent she can scrape up to maintain Joyeuse - a mansion that has been passed down in her family since slave days.

She earns most of her money doing black market archaeology and selling artifacts she discovers mostly on her family's land. She also has a job working for a dig run by one of her university professors. But when two of the student archaeologists are found murdered and buried, the dig is halted leaving Faye in even more need of money.

When she is digging in a previously unexplored corner of land, she discovers bones. These aren't ancient. She identifies an earring that was popular in the 1960s. However, since she was digging illegally, telling anyone about the body threatens all her secrets. So she decides to investigate on her own not knowing that the murderer is still around and wants his secrets to stay buried too.

I liked the multiple timelines that were woven together in this story. Faye discovers a diary that tells the stories of some of her ancestors who also lived in Joyeuse and those stories are woven into the contemporary story. Time also flashes back to when the girl whose bones Faye discovers lived and died.

I liked the variety of characters. I liked the Florida panhandle setting. I liked the added tension that a hurricane taking aim at them brings to the story too. I also like that this is the first of what is currently a twelve-book series. ( )

Easy read; enjoyable story. Likeable characters mostly. I liked how the history of Faye's ancestry was slowly revealed. ( )