Book Review: Love Me or Grieve Me by Diane Vallere (Madison Night #10)

Stars: 5 out of 5

Pros: Great characters in interesting mystery

Cons: None for me

The Bottom Line:

Mix up at paper

Leads Madison to murder

In great tenth entry

Obituary Error Puts Madison in Danger

I always love it when an author finds a unique start to a story.  We get one of those with Love Me or Grieve Me, the tenth Madison Night Mystery from Diane Vallere.

If you haven’t met Madison yet, she’s a decorator living in the Dallas, Texas area.  She’s always had an affinity for Doris Day movies, and she specializes in mid century modern designs.  You’d think that being a decorator would keep her safe, but she keeps finding herself involved in mysteries.

In this case it all starts with a mix up in the paper.  Addison Nigh, a once famous jazz singer, has died, but a small paper in town mixes it up with Madison Night, and other papers pick up on the error.  Naturally, this creates problems for Madison since banks freeze her accounts and clients cancel appointments, or don’t show up at all.

But Madison can’t help but be curious about Addison.  As she begins to meet the woman’s friends and family, she stumbles over a dead body.  Can Madison figure out what is really going on?

Fans of Doris Day will immediately recognize this book’s title as a play on her movie Love Me or Leave Me.  As usual, I watched the movie before I sat down to read this book.  I might have missed some Easter Eggs, but it was very hard to miss some very obvious things that were used from the movie, like Addison’s relationships with those in her orbit.

However, the mystery was all original, and it was great.  There were many threads to it, and it was hard to figure out for sure what was going on until the end.  The climax caught me by surprise, but it was also perfectly logical.

Because of the premise, it gives Madison a real chance to reflect on her life.  She also has to deal with what she wants with her relationship with her boyfriend.  I really enjoyed those scenes and the growth we got for both of them as a result.  These scenes will mean the most to you if you’ve read the previous books in the series, but you can enjoy this book without knowing all of the backstory.  We get some nice scenes with some of the other regulars, too.

While this series tends to be a bit more serious than the author’s Samantha Kidd books, there are still some good laughs here.

Whether or not you are a Doris Day fan, you’ll find Love Me or Grieve Me a hard to put down mystery.

Be sure to check out the rest of the Madison Night Mysteries.