Book Review: Tragedy in Tahoe by Rachele Baker (Rylie Sunderland Mysteries #1)

Stars: 2 out of 5

Pros: Decent mystery, main characters by the end

Cons: Writing

The Bottom Line:

Baker is murdered

Some promise in this debut

But writing is weak

Decent Story in Need of a Good Edit

When I first heard about Tragedy in Tahoe, the first in a new series from Rachele Baker, I thought it sounded fun.  And I love to read books set in California, although I haven’t been to Lake Tahoe in decades.  Sadly, the book wasn’t nearly as good as I’d hoped it would be.

Rylie Sunderland has been working as a veterinarian, a job she loves, in the east bay of San Francisco.  Everything changes when her clinic burns down in a fire.  Not sure what to do next, she agrees to take a part time job for the summer at a B & B some family friends own in Lake Tahoe.

She’s only been there a couple of days when Colin Matthews, who owns the bakery that provides the pastries for the bed and breakfast, is murdered.  Since Rylie’s phone number was in the victim’s pocket, she fears the police consider her a suspect.  Can she figured out what really happened?

My issue with this book was the writing.  It was very poor.  In an attempt to capture how people really talk, we’d get dialogue like this:

“Hi Sam, how are you?”
“I’m fine, Mary, how are you?”

Is that how people talk?  Yes.  Does it make for good dialogue in a novel?  In this case, no.  There are also cases of repetitive phrases or descriptions that needed to be cut.  And, even though the book was written in third person, the author seemed reluctant to type Rylie’s name, using she all the time.  This created some confusing scenes.  And yes, I realize my writing falls into some of these traps at times.  I try to edit them out of my reviews before I post them, but I don’t catch them all.

It’s a shame since there was much to like here.  While only a few of the characters felt like they’d gotten decent development by the end of the book, I really did like them.  This was especially true of Rylie’s dog, who stole my heart.

The mystery itself was good as well.  There were enough clues and red herrings to keep me guessing.  The ending was a bit abrupt, but it did wrap things up nicely and answered all my questions.

As much as I wanted to like Tragedy in Tahoe, the writing was weak enough that I just couldn’t enjoy it.  I don’t think I’ll be back to find out what happens to Rylie next.