Please note that I received this book via NetGalley. This did not impact the rating or review.
I am going to start off that this is going to go a little ranty. And it’s because this cozy mystery decided to downplay some real world things going on and it set me off. And it has to do with the police. Fans of this series knows that the lead, Lana Lee, has been dating her boyfriend Adam Trudeau who is a detective with the local police for most of the series. The last few books have Adam giving Lana his blessing to do her undercover investigating and even has helped him out on one his cases. This book shifts things to have Adam in the hot seat with him being accused of murdering Lana’s ex from college. And this is where my rant comes in. Lana’s usual friends (Kimmy and Megan) are on hand to help out, but now with Meghan dating Adam’s boss there’s tension there. And then Megan gets insulted (as does Lana) about people thinking police do bad things.
Are you for real? Chien is a WOC and I really want to ask her, are you serious? This book was written with everything going down in this country over the last two years, ICE running rampant, and yes the police doing some truly terrible stuff. This book takes place in Cleveland, Ohio, which has a pretty heavy Black population and I am now realizing this book has never even referenced anyone not white or Asian in this book. And I feel like I should have picked up on that way before now, but this is a cozy mystery series so I don’t really expect them to dig deep. But this whole thing just drove me insane. It didn’t get better either with Lana all of a sudden starting to become “afraid” of Adam and I just went this is so dumb. The overall reason behind the murder was such a hot mess and surprise surprise dealt with the police so you think that maybe there be some self-reflection on the part of some of the characters, but nope.
Honestly, the only one not working my nerves in this one was Kimmy. But the series is starting to fall flat for me. Chien needs to decide if she’s going to move her character on from Asia Village murders [and seriously that place is turning into Cabot Cove at this pace] and have her become a private investigator. The last scene with the guilty party was such a mess I didn’t even know what to say about it outside of this is so dumb. I just gave it three stars for the fact that it moved at a steady pace and it seemed to be closing the loops on some subplots from earlier books. And some scenes were funny, but it was not satisfying at all with the whole both Megan and Lana are dating cops things.
- Middle – middle book of a series; three star rating; a book that starts in the middle of the action; in the middle of it, embedded or undercover. I gave this book three stars.
