Another Southern mystery/romance/fantasy from Sarah Addison Allen. I need to not read these back to back — they tend to run together, and I run out of things to say beyond “these are so sweet and cute and fun!”.
“We’re connected, as women. It’s like a spiderweb. If one part of that web vibrates, if there’s trouble, we all know it, but most of the time we’re just too scared, or selfish, or insecure to help. But if we don’t help each other, who will?”
So fancy socialite Paxton Osgood (if that’s not a rich Southern woman’s name, I don’t know what is) has the task of reopening the Blue Madam, an inn from the 1930s that has fallen into ruin. The Blue Madam used to be owned by Willa Jackson’s family, but the Jacksons fell into ruin right around when Willa’s grandmother suddenly got pregnant at the age of 17. While Willa’s grandmother and Paxton’s grandmother were fiercely close, and even started a little society together, Paxton and Willa have never gotten along. But when a skeleton is discovered on the property of the Blue Madam, Willa and Paxton end up together to solve the mystery.
This one was pretty good — the flashbacks to Willa’s grandmother’s time were good, and I like how bits and pieces of family history were revealed. I was less enamored by the menfolk in this novel than others by the same author, but the women were pretty well-written.
