I started this book with very positive expectations, simply because I could so well relate to main character Summer Merriweather. She's a woman who, like me, hates romance novels, dislikes cozy mysteries, has a history of working in higher education and is terrified of eight-legged critters. Wow, I thought; any or all of these threads will make for an interesting plot.Woulda, coulda, shoulda - but didn't; the best I can say now that I've finished is that it's 20% substance and 80% speculation. The only one of those threads that was fully developed is her hatred of romance novels - which ironically, strung out over many pages, ended up being a tribute to how great they really are. Then there's higher education, in which I spent several enjoyable years as a university administrator; turns out Summer hates her experience. And in her mind, it hates her despite the fact that she has a Ph.D. in Shakespearean literature (which she's fond of throwing in the faces of those around her every time something doesn't go her way). Cozy mysteries, too, somehow become more friend than foe. And my angst at almost every page that some kind of confrontation with those aforementioned creepy crawlers would happen? Well, let's just say I worried for nothing.
The substance comes when Summer's mother, free-wheeling Hildy, owner of Beach Reads bookstore, drops dead of an apparent heart attack and Summer returns to Brigid's Island for the funeral. She reluctantly comes from her self-imposed exile in England (she escaped there after a classroom video she thinks maligned her dignity went viral online; after all, she has a Ph.D., don't you know). Now that she's back on the beach where she grew up, readers learn she never liked it there, didn't get along with her late mother and hates her mother's bookstore because it stocks "trashy" beach novels and not a single work of what she and her Ph.D. consider serious literature. If that weren't enough, when she left home years earlier, she left a sour taste in the mouth of several island residents.
Summer hasn't seen her mother for ages, but she somehow concludes she couldn't possibly have had a heart attack (the argument seemingly being that she ate healthy foods and practiced Yoga and witchcraft). The rest of the book mostly centers on never-ending speculation: Is it really murder? Did he do it? Did she? Will I get my teaching job back? Should I call to find out? Do I really want it back? Did my mother really love me? Do her friends love me? Why don't people understand that my Ph.D. makes me smarter than everybody else on this godforsaken island?
Besides that, while I realize the copy I read is a pre-release version, courtesy of the publisher via NeGalley, the book could stand a bit more editing. Glitches like Summer's telling one character that she'd finished a novel only to tell another just a few pages later that no, she had not, really put a damper on any enjoyment I was feeling at the moment. And I'm still flummoxed as to how a bird described as very large could perch comfortably on a single human finger. Oh wait; maybe that's because I don't have a Ph.D.
I'm going to assume (yes, I know what happens when you do) that the author is trying to lay a ton of fodder for the next book - this is supposed to be the first of a series, I believe - as well as familiarize readers with characters and settings. As far as the settings go, she was successful; I loved the bookstore and life on the island and and would be very interested in reading about them again. The characters, not so much; most were rather nondescript, and the snobby Summer can take her precious Ph.D. to England. Or Canada. Or anywhere except the next book. As she speculates about herself somewhere in the pages, "Summer was aware she wasn't easily liked...but she wasn't completely unlikable, was she?"
You already know my answer to that question. Sorry, but for me this series ends here. I'm PhinishD.
Little Bookshop of Murder by Maggie Blackburn (Crooked Lane Books, July 2020); no page length listed.
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