Purchased – Carol's Notebook

Sounds Like Trouble by Pamela Samuels Young and Dwayne Alexander Smith

August 18, 2025August 19, 2025 by CarolNo Comments

Sounds Like Trouble picks up where the first in the series leaves off. Jackson and Mac have combined their PI offices and are working together. This time around they are "hired" by some major bad guys to find a certain package. These are not clients they can refuse. To make it worse, someone else is after the package an that someone is willing to kill whoever he need to to get it. There's a lot of action, plenty of good dialogue, and a bit of sparks, but some of their decisions are just not good. And they believe people when they obviously shouldn't. They are a nice break from my usual cozy mystery sleuths, though, so they get extra points for that. I listened to the audio and appreciated having two narrators, one for Mac's point of view and one from Jackson's. Both did a great job bringing the characters to life. They also kept the tension and humor balanced well. Overall,...

The Sea Turtle Did It by Kay Dew Shostak

August 14, 2025August 19, 2025 by CarolNo Comments

I discovered the Southern Beach mysteries last year when I was on vacation on Amelia Island, fictionalized here as Sophia Island. I absolutely loved the town, the beach, everything, and the author does a fabulous job with bringing the area to life in these books. Jewel is still new to the island but I love the women she's become friends with. This time around a young woman's body is found in a fake turtle nest and the police don't seem to be getting anywhere, so the lunch group start digging around for answers. The women each being their strengths and connections to the case. They get to the solution before I did, that's for sure. And I like seeing Jewel settle in and embrace her new home and life, even if her husband won't come visit. I need to order # 3 soon....

Written in Stone by Paige Shelto

August 7, 2025August 7, 2025 by CarolNo Comments

I love Delaney and the crew at The Cracked Spine and this series always leaves me wanting to visit Edinburgh. And I love Delaney and her quirky friends/co-workers. It's also nice that she's happily married to someone who is not a cop. This time around a visiting professor who is attempting to sell a Pictish artifact is killed. We get some good background on the Picts and, randomly, dinosaurs, which was fun. This series always does a nice job weaving history with the current mystery, The whodunnit was a little too obvious and, while the 3D printing aspect added a contemporary touch, i just can't believe it would dupe anyone. There's no way 3D printed artifacts/ fossils would hold up to even a cursory look, so why bother with the printing part at all? Why not just bluff that you have them? I did enjoy the story, even if it wasn't quite as good as some of the others. It's...

The Fatal Flying Affair by T.E. Kinsey

July 29, 2025July 29, 2025 by CarolNo Comments

The Fatal Flying Affair is the first in the series that I've picked up, but it worked fine without having read the previous installments. Lady Hardcastle's brother, Harry, who works for the Secret Service Bureau, stops by with an assignment. He wants Emily and her maid/best friend, Florence, to look into the death of a pilot who was testing a parachute and to find the person who is leaking top secret intelligence. Harry believes airplanes are going to have major military I just didn't love this one. The banter felt a bit too clever, if that makes sense, and I didn't care about the solution to the mystery. The village talent show was fun, but I'm not sure I'll pick up another in the series....

Surfboard Stabbing by Jasmine Webb

June 27, 2025June 27, 2025 by CarolNo Comments

The blurb is a little misleading. Charlie is actually intending on surfing, although she can barely stand up on the board, in hopes of winning one of the raffle prizes. So she is right there when one of the surfers is found dead, stabbed while on his board. When Charlie realizes that her friend, Vesper, will be one of the cops' main suspects, she decides she has to investigate. Her boyfriend/ police detective is also on the case which makes it a bit awkward. I don't know. This one was fun. Charlie was her usual entertaining self; Rosie and Dot are as resourceful as ever; Jake is (almost) following the rules, but I just didn't enjoy it as much as some of the others. Maybe it was because the dead man was one of the charming jerks that women know will cheat on them but date him anyway, He also wasn't making great business decisions, so we have plenty of suspects....

The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses by Malka Ann Older

June 25, 2025June 25, 2025 by CarolNo Comments

This one might have been my favorite of the series so far. Not because of the plot necessarily - Pleiti is helping a friend who is concerned about potential threats to her cousin who is up for a promotion at another university- but because of the language and the Holmes/Watson vibes, both of which are so much more noticeable in this installment. I will say that this does work as a stand-alone although one of the major events from the first is referenced and carries some importance. The series is set on Jupiter, which was settled after Earth's atmosphere became uninhabitable. Pleiti is a professor in the classics department, studying what life was like on earth in the hopes of eventually returning, which makes a nice contrast with the modernists she meets, who are more interested in studying the now and how people and animals are adapting. But people are still people, with jealousies and secrets, which means people like...