Announcement Postponed by Murder
At times, I fear I am getting more critical when I’m reading. Of course, any long running series runs into a sub-par book occasionally. Whichever is the case, I enjoyed Engaged to Die, the fourteenth in Carolyn Hart’s Death on Demand series, but the more I thought about it, the more the weaknesses bugged me.
The premise of the series remains the same. Annie Darling is the owner of the mystery bookstore Death on Demand on an island off the coast of South Carolina. It may be a vacation paradise, but Annie has also found that it is a hotbed of murder.
This book opens in January, and it involves a family that owns an art gallery on the island. They are gearing up for an opening for a well-respected artist, but Virginia, the owner, is also going to use it to announce her engagement to a much younger man, much to her step children’s dismay. Naturally, Annie is going to be there with her husband, Max. But when the time comes for the announcement, it gets postponed, and soon after, a dead body is discovered. Will Annie solve the latest mystery?
The book is set in early January. How early? Early enough that a few places still have Christmas decorations up, and Annie’s part time Christmas employee is still on the island. Since Chloe becomes the prime suspect, I get the timing. And I get that we need to keep bringing in people to make Annie care about the case, but I did find Chloe’s presence a bit abrupt since we haven’t heard of her before. Still, I was mostly willing to let that one slide.
However, we are missing quite a few of the regulars. Again, because of the just completed holiday. Even the ones around get far less page time than normal. Since that’s where much of the humor in the series comes from, I missed them.
I still loved watching Annie and Max together. They aren’t as united in their efforts as normal, but they still make a great couple.
Meanwhile, the pacing was off. A subplot takes up much of the first part of the book, so I was more than ready for the murder to take place. The ending works, I guess. It’s very rushed with no real explanation about how Annie pieced it together. Honestly, I had a couple of questions on exactly what was going on. I can work it out, but it isn’t the most logical.
Then there’s a relationship that devolved here just so we could have Annie dealing with an antagonistic relationship with the local police. That is one trope of cozies I’ve enjoyed seeing lessen over the years. In this case, there were other ways those scenes could have been played that would have been in keeping with the relationships that have already been established.
Honestly, I was enjoying the book as I listened to it. It was only once I finished that I thought about some of these things.
Kate Reading is still the narrator for the audio books, and she’s still doing a good job bringing the story to life.
The series has hit the sweet spot with the mystery references. We still get quite a few, but they don’t take over at times. I’m also enjoying catches references to some books I was reading when this one came out in 2003.
I know I’m sounding negative here. Fans of the series will definitely still be glad they picked it up. But it would be nice if it were stronger.
So, if you are a fan of the series, give Engaged to Die a chance. But don’t make this book the one you used to meet the characters.
Here are the rest of the Death on Demand Mysteries.
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