Another book ruined by the narrator ( )

So many red herrings. So many literary references. ( )

KP - great ( )

Sometimes I run across books that, in spite of obvious points of diversion from my personal taste, I can't help reading anyway. This series is a perfect example.

The premise is both wonderful and cheesy as hell. Like 70's cheesy, but still really wonderful. The series centers around Storyton village and resort; a luxury resort centered around the love of reading. Wonderful. Jane Stewart is the manager and heir of the resort, as well as the Guardian of a super-secret repository of all. the. books. Or at least all the books, scrolls. manuscripts, clay tablets, that are priceless, rare. dangerous. This part is 50/50 wonderful/cheesy. The super-secret repository comes complete with a super-secret security force that has access to all the toys, and they guard against other, evil, super-secret organisations that want access to the library. Super-cheesy.

Still, I can't resist. The author's love of books is obvious and she casually title-drops interesting sounding books throughout the narrative. This book focused on books about books too, which is my personal weakness, so several titles have been added to my lists.

The mystery around this one was ... so-so. A very old skeleton was dug up during excavations on site and the only known copy of a controversial book is found with it. Then new murders start occurring. So far, so good. Unfortunately, the author made the murderer too obvious by overdoing the hiding in plain site chestnut. And then giving him a motive that is firmly in the cheesy camp.

I'm never in a rush to buy these, but when I'm in the mood for a between books palette cleanser, these work and I get to imagine how amazing an entire resort centered around books would be. ( )

If a picture is worth 1000 words a map included in a book must be worth 10,000, because it’s not only a picture but it has words as well. It gives a sense of place and of history to any book that includes them. Tolkien’s hand drawn map in the Hobbit introduced them to me many years ago and I still am inclined to give a book with a map an extra chance to draw me into it’s world.

I’ve enjoyed this series in the past having read the first 3 books a few years ago but it has an essential difference from other cozy small town mysteries. It almost seems like a fantasy spy series with the secret societies and the very nature of the Storyton Hall secrets. Most cozy novels are set in very mundane albeit sometimes exotic locations. At first I thought that action included in the series was a detriment but now I actually consider it to a positive.

I liked to see Jane spring into action to retrieve her kids after they have been kidnapped, and look forward to the next book in the series where it appears that Jane will travel to a Templar location to try and find out what’s happened to her lover and her best friends brother Edwin. ( )