Booked for Trouble by Eva Gates

First Line: I love my mother. Truly, I do.

Lucy has found her perfect home and her perfect job: resident and librarian of the Bodie Island Lighthouse. She loves bonding with the library cat, walking on the beach, and book club. Needless to say, having the attentions of two handsome men certainly doesn't hurt either. What she does not need is to have her mother show up in an attempt to drag her back to Boston, but that's exactly what socialite Suzanne Richardson does.

When she's not trying to bend Lucy to her will, she picks a public fight with a woman who turns up dead outside the library the very next day. Suzanne is Suspect Numero Uno-- which means that Lucy has to track down a killer.

I'm still enjoying both the popularity of this fictional lighthouse library and its setting, but I have to be honest and admit that I picked up Booked for Trouble with a bit of trepidation. It's a quirk of mine, but I do not care for high maintenance parents in the cozies that I read, and that's exactly what Lucy's mother is. I am happy to report that although Suzanne is not the type of person to ever become my BFF, that angle of the book was not as bad as I'd anticipated. Whew!

Lucy continues to be an interesting main character, but too many of the secondary characters are two-dimensional. Take Charlene for example. It would appear that her sole reason for existence is to annoy everyone with her passion for rap music-- and she's the only one who really stands out in my mind. The rest are a kind of blur, and I hope book three is the "breakout" book for them. Speaking of breaking out, Lucy's two love interests need to stop spinning their wheels and start making some moves. 

Although I enjoyed reading how Lucy finally found the killer, I knew the person's identity early on due to a certain peculiarity in the dialogue. I can be strange that way sometimes.  And have any of you noticed that the latest thing in cozies seems to be cross-marketing-- that is, mentioning books by other cozy writers? At least it fits in here because Lucy is a librarian, but I've been noticing it in several books lately. I realize that things like this place a book clearly within its timeframe, but I prefer my books without branding, marketing, or suggestive selling.

Booked for Trouble is a good solid mystery with a winning main character and a perfect setting; however, it needs some of its other components to be fleshed out more so this series can shine the way I know that it can.

Booked for Trouble by Eva Gates

ISBN: 9780451470942

NAL/Obsidian © 2015

Mass Market Paperback, 304 pages

Cozy Mystery, #2 Lighthouse Library mystery

Rating: C+/B-

Source: Purchased at The Poisoned Pen


 

By Book or by Crook by Eva Gates

First Line: Only in the very back of my mind, in my most secret dreams, did I ever dare hope I'd have such a moment.

For ten years Lucy Richardson has been a librarian at the Harvard Library and engaged (sort of) to her parents' choice of future son-in-law. But that relationship comes to a screeching halt, and Lucy decides to take the opportunity to make a clean break. 

She moves to North Carolina's Outer Banks to be near her aunt and cousin, and she becomes the newest librarian at the Lighthouse Library. She's doing what she loves in her favorite place in the whole wide world. But when a priceless first edition Jane Austen novel is stolen from the library's exhibit and the chairman of the library board is murdered, Lucy discovers that she's going to have to fight for the new life she's trying to create for herself.

I love libraries. I love lighthouses. When I came across this first book in the Lighthouse Library cozy series, my eyes lit up, and when I discovered that "Eva Gates" is the pen name of one of my favorite authors, Vicki Delany, that was the icing on the cake. North Carolina's Outer Banks seems to be one of the hot settings for cozies, and By Book or by Crook fits right in with its neighbors.

I liked Lucy Richardson, even though she didn't win any points by staying in a relationship for ten years just to keep her parents off her back. Grow a spine, girl, because I have a feeling that those parents of yours won't be able to leave you alone in your new home! 

Lucy is surrounded by an excellent cast of secondary characters who are a good mix of supportive and irritating. Fellow librarian Charlene's passion for rap music is a running joke throughout the book, and it's a joke I enjoyed since I personally didn't have to listen to the music. I did find it a tad worrying that Lucy has two prospective beaus. She may not be ready for them yet, but I've learned to treat romantic triangles with a great deal of suspicion, thanks to Janet Evanovich. 

Lucy's fellow librarians are just the sort of people you'd want to work with, and here's hoping that Louise Jane never ever gets a permanent job in the lighthouse library. Louise Jane is the sort of person you'd just love to slap, and I figure the main reason why she so desperately wants to work in the library is that no one wants her there. (As you can see, this is a wonderful cast of characters because I seem to have gotten emotionally involved with them!)

Another perk of the book is that you really get a feel for what libraries have to deal with in this age of constant budget cuts. The author makes it clear that keeping libraries alive depends on the librarians, the patrons, and members of the library board and city government who all realize how vital these places are to communities.

The mystery in By Book or by Crook provides both the high and the low points of the book. The high point? The killer is hiding in the best place of all-- right out in plain sight, and I cannot believe I didn't figure out the person's identity. The low point? I had a very difficult time suspending my disbelief when it came to the lack of security in place at the library for the exhibit of priceless first editions of all of Jane Austen's novels as well as one of Austen's notebooks. I could easily go on in more depth about this, but I don't want to slip and give away too much of the story.

Lack of security aside, I really enjoyed this book. The author took the rather unfeasible idea of putting a library in a lighthouse and made it work with wonderful descriptive passages, an excellent cast, and an intriguing mystery. I'm looking forward to heading back to the Outer Banks for the next book in the series! 

By Book or by Crook by Eva Gates

ISBN: 9780451470935

Obsidian © 2015

Mass Market Paperback, 352 pages

Cozy Mystery, #1 Lighthouse Library mystery

Rating: A-

Source: Purchased at The Poisoned Pen.