Peril at Pennington Manor by Tracy Gardner

Available June 7, 2022

Avery Ayers is back! Her life has settled considerably since the beginning of book 1. Her father has returned and taken over the household so Avery can go back to being a carefree singleton while he manages the more stressful aspects of taking care of a household. Unfortunately not everything is business as usual when Antiques and Artifacts Appraised takes over a project at a secluded estate owned by a royal family from abroad. When Avery and her colleagues begin examining the priceless heirlooms that fill the manor house they immediately discover that someone has taken advantage of the family's absence to abscond with some of their most valuable treasures.

There's a lot going on in this book. Avery is training for her first full marathon, she's reconnected with Hank while Art was conspicuously missing, and Antiques and Artifacts Appraised has been granted a contract with a local auction house that is keeping them very busy... but not so busy that they'd turn down the opportunity to appraise a manor house full of priceless treasure. I found the manor house and the royal family to be a bit of a stretch. Though it was an interesting premise it would have been more believable if it was a branch of the Vanderbilt family or something like that as opposed to a royal family from another country. I also struggled throughout to keep all the characters straight. There were the Hoffmans, the Wolfs, Mathew, Roderick, Greg, Suzanne, I think there was an Ian, there were times I had to wrack my brain to figure out who was who and when they showed up in a scene I also had to quickly try to figure out if they belonged where they were.

The mystery itself was interesting but there wasn't much in the way of investigation and there was only one clue dropped that I was able to recall looking back and it wasn't really a clue, more of a hint that could have meant anything.

I enjoyed the story, I like Avery and I like Art and the overall story is headed in a good direction in general, but I didn't like it quite as much as the first book in the series. I do look forward to continuing with the series.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC.