Murder Checks Out by Victoria Gilbert

Available: November 14, 2023

Rating: 5 stars

I've been following Amy Muir's story from the very beginning. I love Taylorsford and Amy's life there is idyllic (murder notwithstanding). The characters are interesting and unique and I love any book with a library setting. This book had the added bonus of being set at Christmas time, which is always fun.

I have to say, it made me really sad to open this book and find out that yes, Amy was newly pregnant at the end of book 7 in this series, and... now she has FIVE YEAR OLD twins. And we missed the entire thing! We missed her pregnancy, we missed her finding out she was having twins, we missed their birth, we missed their infancy, teething, first steps, first words, first day of school, everything. We missed it all. Five years of Amy's life, five early years of her marriage, and the first five years of her children's lives, gone. And I feel a bit cheated to be honest.

This series has gone through some growing pains. In the beginning there were some smaller mysteries embedded in the story and those would linger on after the murder was solved, which was a bit frustrating. Then later in the series there was a lot of James Bond secret agent stuff creeping in, which wasn't terrible but didn't feel appropriate for a cozy. Things have really calmed down and there are still some illusions to secret agent stuff but it's not front-and-center anymore. Despite the ups and downs, I'm definitely in this series for the long haul.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC.