Murder Most Grave by G. A. McKevett

Available May 31, 2022

Rating: 4 stars

After a rough day at school, Waycross Reid goes to hide out in the local cemetery and have some man-to-man time with his deceased Grandpa Art when his little getaway turns into a crime scene. Who killed local n'er-do-well, Dexter? Stella and Manny are on the case!

This series is somewhat hit or miss for me. Stella is super sweet and I love Savannah and her siblings Alma and Waycross, but most of the children in the Reid family are incredibly obnoxious (and spoiler alert, they actually get worse as they get older). Stella's relationship with Manny is a bright spot in the darkness that is Stella's life but in the reverse spin-off from the Savannah Reid series (if I'm recalling correctly) we hear that Stella mourned her first husband Art for the rest of her life, never remarrying and only moving out of her little shotgun shack to live in a mobile home at the beach near Savannah in California some 30 years in the future.

The mystery Stella and Manny are left to solve in this book, the murder in the cemetery, is somewhat disappointing. There's really only one person who could or would have committed the crime and though it took the crime-fighting duo the whole book to come up with the killer, the reader will guess it long before that.

Another thing I've noticed with the last few books I've read by this author is that they tend to be real tearjerkers at the end. While I don't necessarily not like that, that's not what I expect or really want in a cozy. But all this having been said, this series and the Savannah Reid series are good reads, they're fun and quick and you'll feel strongly about the characters, whether loving them or hating them.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC.