Killed on Blueberry Hill by Sharon Farrow
My Rating: ★★★
As tourist season continues to boom, Marlee dives face first into the Blueberry Blow Out festival. Literally. Her fiancé, Ryan, signed her up for a pie eating contest in hopes to outshine his rival, Porter. As the events continue, Marlee soon learns that Ryan has a mean streak when losing an event turns into an all-out brawl. Just when things can’t get any worse, Porter is murdered, and Ryan gleefully takes off on a fishing trip. As Marlee hunts down the killer so that she can clear Ryan’s name, she learns that her fiancé is hiding a lot more than she could’ve ever imagined.
I’ve been a fan of this series since I picked up the first book a few months back, so I was excited to get my hands on this installment. Sadly, I spent a good portion of the book irritated and finally got on board with the story a little past the halfway point. It’s not a bad story, and there are great things about it, but the story dragged along and there were some things that just kept taking me out of it.
Early on, Marlee implies through her thoughts that a character thinks she’s weak and helpless and therefore makes herself weak and helpless after helping this character get away from two sexual harassers. This just rubbed me the wrong way and really made me lose respect for Marlee, which soured my view as I read several more chapters. Combined with her relationship falling apart, how little she poked around in Ryan’s life while trying to solve the murder, and the slow pace of the story, it took me some time to truly get back into the story and like Marlee again.
That said, there were good things. I liked that Marlee and Ryan’s relationship problems finally came to a head, revealing that Ryan has a lot of secrets and ulterior motives. When the other shoe dropped, it really dropped! However, it took a long time to get to this point and Marlee seemed like she was just poking around doing a very distracted attempt at sleuthing because she didn’t want to face the sinking ship that was her engagement. I also think it’s odd that Ryan being the prime suspect in the murder was kept under wraps even though the town’s gossip queen must’ve known he was a suspect. I would’ve liked to see the rumor mill really get churning with that information as Marlee investigated the murder. There could’ve been more pushback when she jumped to conclusions because it read like she was just there to point the finger at anyone but Ryan.
I enjoyed seeing the usual cast of characters and seeing what they were up to as well as hearing their opinions and seeing their reactions as events unfolded. I think Natasha, Dean, and Andrew are my favorite characters. I love seeing how they interact with the other characters and what shenanigans they get up to themselves. I would honestly follow a spin-off series following any of the three if that was something that happened somewhere down the line.
I felt optimistic about the next installment when I reached the last quarter of the book because the story picked up and it had the same charm that hooked me in the first place. While this is not my favorite book of the series, I am looking forward to the next installment and am already counting the days until its release.
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