Murder is No Picnic by Amy Pershing

Available June 7, 2022

Rating: 3 stars

Samantha Barnes is looking forward to the 4th of July. She knows she wants to see the local parade and have her friends over for a clambake but what she really needs is the perfect dessert to finish off the perfect day. At Clara's Place, a local restaurant, she finds the world's best Blueberry Buckle and Clara herself offers to show her how to make it. Even better? She'll make it on camera for another Cape Cod Foodie video!

Unfortunately, though the video shoot goes great, by the next morning the star chef is dead. The police think her death was an accident caused by a combination of forgetfulness and sleeping pills. Samantha knows better but her insistence that Clara's death was no accident backfires and the one person she didn't want taking the fall ends up behind bars.

I absolutely loved the first book in this series. The second one dragged a bit with page-long paragraphs covering things of no consequence to the story. This book also had a lot of long, draggy paragraphs but I also noticed other things that didn't work for me. Sam talks to herself all the time, calling herself by name. Sam thinks, for no apparent reason, that her relationship with Jason is on the rocks. Sure, he's halfway across the country and it's hard for them to coordinate time to talk, but Sam assumes they're about to break up every time he misses a call. The story was very natural, the investigation was good, I just didn't appreciate that Sam has started to seem self-centered and a lot less mature.

This book also did something that is a pet peeve of mine. The mystery was solved about 3/4 of the way through the book... and then the book kept going. Nothing much happens in the last 1/4 or so of the book. Sam goes to the store and buys lots of butter. Sam goes to a parade. They dig a pit for the clambake (that takes a week and we see it all). The whole time I'm thinking "maybe that person wasn't really the killer, maybe something else is going to happen." But it didn't. And, despite all the extra stuff at the end, the book still ends with a cliffhanger. The one question that could for sure have been answered in all those many extra pages is left unanswered.

I think this author has potential and I will continue to read books by her because I do enjoy her writing but I'm not sure I'll continue with the particular series.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC.