kirkusreviews.com
A sleuthing librarian confronts a case uncomfortably close to
home.
Lucy Richardson quit her job at Harvard to escape her
Boston-based mother’s matchmaking and fled to her relatives in the Outer Banks
of North Carolina, where she works at the local library. Her cousin Josie, who
owns a popular bakery, plans to marry Jake Greenblatt of Jake’s Seafood Bar.
The low-key, inexpensive winter nuptials they plan are upended by a visit from
Josie’s paternal grandmother, Gloria O’Malley, who arrives from New Orleans
with daughter Mary Anna, niece Florence, and grandniece Mirabelle, all of whom
actively push a fancy wedding. To Josie’s horror, showy Mirabelle, who runs an
event-planning business with Florence, wants to stage the wedding of the year.
On top of these problems, Jake’s former girlfriend, arriving from New York, insists
they get back together, and the library develops a large and dangerous crack in
one wall. The former lighthouse that houses the library and Lucy’s tiny
apartment is beloved of the natives, but where will they get $100,000 to repair
it? Lucy manages to keep Josie’s bridal shower small, and the bride-to-be bakes
a selection of gluten-free treats for the predatory Mirabelle, on the lookout
for a third husband, who annoys Lucy by hitting on her boyfriend, Connor McNeil.
Things get both better and worse when Mirabelle drops dead in the middle of the
shower. The bakery is shut down, and Josie’s suspected of poisoning Mirabelle
by putting something in the gluten-free pastries that no one else seems to have
touched. When the police learn that a superannoyed Josie had threatened
Mirabelle, Lucy channels one of her favorite fictional detectives and starts
searching for the real killer.
The fifth in Gates’ sprightly series (The Spook in the Stacks,
2018, etc.) sets romance and a mighty good mystery against a delightful picture
of the Outer Banks.
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