Review: Killer in the Carriage House
Title: Killer in the Carriage House
Series: Victorian Village
Author: Sheila Connolly
Release Date: July 9th, 2019
Rating: 3.5/5 Stars
Find it here: Goodreads
Synopsis from Goodreads: After fifteen years away, Kate Hamilton never expected to end up back in her hometown of Asheboro, Maryland full time. And she definitely didn’t expect to be leading the charge of recreating the town as a Victorian village and tourist attraction. But as unexpected as the circumstances are, Kate is ready to tackle them. The town, on the other hand, is going to take some convincing. Ever since Henry Barton’s shovel factory closed down, it’s started to seem like there are more tumbleweeds than tourists rolling down Main Street. Kate’s ideas are good, but ambitious—and her friends and neighbors are worried that finding the money for them would push the town even further into debt. Luckily, Kate and the handsome historian Joshua Wainwright are two very determined people who may have come up with a solution. The Barton mansion, meant to be the centerpiece of the Victorian village, has proven to be a veritable goldmine of documents about the town’s nineteenth-century history, and Kate is convinced the papers hide something of value. When a dead body turns up in the town library—mere hours before the documents were meant to arrive there themselves—Kate begins to worry that the papers spell danger instead of dollars. It seems that someone doesn’t want these forgotten secrets coming to light, and they’ll do whatever it takes to keep Kate quiet…
My Review: While I really enjoyed the first book in this series, this one fell a bit flat for me. I felt like the mystery itself was more of an after thought than the focus of the book, which instead centered around historical research for the Victorian village. While I love history, that wasn’t what I was looking for in my cozy mystery. There also wasn’t much of a reason to care about the victim or the murder so it made me lose interest. I also didn’t really buy the end of the story. The mystery wasn’t really wrapped up very well. I’m hoping that book three in the series will do a better job but I don’t recommend this one.
*I received this book from Minotaur Books in exchange for an honest review*