With Halloween just around the corner, the fall colors in Georgetown are brilliant. As manager of the Color Me Read bookstore, coloring book creator Florrie Fox has arranged for psychic author Hilda Rattenhorst to read from Spooktacular Ghost Stories. But the celebrity medium arrives for the event in hysterics, insisting she just saw a bare foot sticking out of a rolled-up carpet in a nearby alley. Is someone trying to sweep murder under the rug?
Florrie calls in her policeman beau, Sergeant Eric Jonquille, but the carpet corpse has disappeared without a trace. Then in the middle of her reading, Hilda chillingly declares that she feels the killer’s presence in the store. Is this a publicity stunt or a genuine psychic episode? It seems there’s no happy medium. When a local bibliophile is soon discovered missing, a strange mystery begins to unroll. Now it’s up to Florrie and Jonquille to expose a killer’s true colors . . .
Release Date: Sep 28, 2021
Series: Pink & Ink
Book: 3
Publisher: Kensington
Imprint: Kensington Cozies
Price: $9.99
It’s almost Halloween and strange things are happening in Georgetown where Florrie Fox manages the Color Me Read bookstore. For starters, Florrie witnesses an assault, a psychic author doing a reading of her new book claims there is a murderer in the shop, and then rumors go around that a ghost attacked someone in the store. When Florrie discovers a murder victim, she gets involved in the investigation as well as some potentially supernatural events.
This is the third book in the Pen and Ink series and the third I’ve read. I think each book stands on its own fairly well. Krista Davis’s Domestic Diva series is one of my favorites, but I haven’t warmed to Florrie and her friends in the same way. Florrie is likable, but with the exception of her boyfriend, Eric, her friends aren’t compelling to me. I love the premise that Florrie designs coloring books for adults and although a coloring book provides an important clue in the murder, i was disappointed they didn’t play as big of a part as in the prior book. I felt that was one of things that made the series so unique. Florrie also enjoys sketching people she has encountered each day which is not only interesting to read about, but also gives Florrie something to refer back to in order to investigate the case.
Sometimes the descriptions in the book and the plot got confusing to me. There are also so many conversations among the characters on whether or not ghosts are real that the debate starts to overshadow the actual investigation. I was happy that the latter parts of the book got a lot better. Just when it seems the case has been solved, a couple of twists occur before the very end that really surprised me. Some aspects of the story such as a screaming human skull that keeps changing locations in Florrie’s shop, possible ghost sightings, and an eerie nighttime cemetery walk make this an entertaining, spooky read for Halloween. I don’t love everything about the book but the mysterious things going on in Georgetown, Florrie’s sense of humor, and the surprising ending help make this an entertaining cozy mystery overall.
~ Christine
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